A PacBio Hi-Fi Genome Assembly of the Painter’s Mussel Unio pictorum (Linnaeus, 1758)

Abstract

The highly diverse group of freshwater mussels from order Unionida, are found in the world's freshwater systems due to several fascinating evolutionary adaptations, including ‘parental care’, and most notably, an obligatory parasitic phase in their early life cycle, called glochidia, which infests and uses fish for nutrition and dispersal. Freshwater mussels play essential ecological roles in freshwater habitats, including water filtration, sediment bioturbation and nutrient cycling. However, these species are also highly threatened, being one of the faunal groups with the highest recorded extinction rate in the wild. Genomics methods have an incredible potential to promote biodiversity conservation, allowing characterisation of population health, identification of adaptive genetic elements, delineation of conservation units, and providing a framework for predictive assessments of the impact of anthropogenic threats and climate change. Unfortunately, only six freshwater mussel species have had their whole genomes sequenced to date, and only two of these are European species. Here, we present the first genome assembly of the Painter's Mussel, Unio pictorum (Linnaeus, 1758), the type species representative of the order and the most widespread species of the genus in Europe. We used long-read PacBio HiFi sequencing reads to produce a highly contiguous assembly that will pave the way for the study of European freshwater mussels in the Genome Era.

Chromosome-level genome assembly of the freshwater mussel Sinosolenaia oleivora (Heude, 1877)

“…Genomic data is considered fundamental for revealing biological characteristics, inferring evolutionary mechanisms, and promoting effective conservation 20 . To date, only seven freshwater mussel species have had their genomes sequenced (Table S1 , Supplementary File) 21 – 28 , and only one of these is a Chinese species 27 . The whole genome of S. oleivora is lacking.…”