Chromosome-level genome assembly and annotation of the Yunling cattle with PacBio and Hi-C sequencing data

Abstract

Yunling cattle is a new breed of beef cattle bred in Yunnan Province, China. It is bred by crossing the Brahman, the Murray Grey and the Yunnan Yellow cattle. Yunling cattle can adapt to the tropical and subtropical climate environment, and has good reproductive ability and growth speed under high temperature and high humidity conditions, it also has strong resistance to internal and external parasites and with good beef performance. In this study, we generated a high-quality chromosome-level genome assembly of a male Yunling cattle using a combination of short reads sequencing, PacBio HiFi sequencing and Hi-C scaffolding technologies. The genome assembly(3.09 Gb) is anchored to 31 chromosomes(29 autosomes plus one X and Y), with a contig N50 of 35.97 Mb and a scaffold N50 of 112.01 Mb. It contains 1.62 Gb of repetitive sequences and 20,660 protein-coding genes. This first construction of the Yunling cattle genome provides a valuable genetic resource that will facilitate further study of the genetic diversity of bovine species and accelerate Yunling cattle breeding efforts.