Full disclosure: Genome assembly is still hard

Abstract

Two recent papers highlight the fascinating comparative genomics of anhydrobiosis, the ability to withstand complete desiccation, in bdelloid rotifers and tardigrades. However, both groups had to openly deal with the significant difficulties of generating and interpreting short-read draft assemblies—especially challenging in microscopic species with high sequence polymorphism. These exemplars demonstrate the need to go beyond single draft-quality reference genomes to high-quality multiple species comparative genomics if we are to fully capture the value of genomics.