A chromosome-level reference genome of the hornbeam, Carpinus fangiana

Abstract

Betulaceae, the birch family, comprises six living genera and over 160 species, many of which are economically valuable. To deepen our knowledge of Betulaceae species, we have sequenced the genome of a hornbeam, Carpinus fangiana, which belongs to the most species-rich genus of the Betulaceae subfamily Coryloideae. Based on over 75 Gb (~200x) of high-quality next-generation sequencing data, we assembled a 386.19 Mb C. fangiana genome with contig N50 and scaffold N50 sizes of 35.32 kb and 1.91 Mb, respectively. Furthermore, 357.84 Mb of the genome was anchored to eight chromosomes using over 50 Gb (~130x) Hi-C sequencing data. Transcriptomes representing six tissues were sequenced to facilitate gene annotation, and over 5.50 Gb high-quality data were generated for each tissue. The structural annotation identified a total of 27,381 protein-coding genes in the assembled genome, of which 94.36% were functionally annotated. Additionally, 4,440 non-coding genes were predicted.