Project description:The objective of our study is to obtain a high-quality reference genome of Poeciliopsis prolifica with gene annotation and identify the exonic SNP in inbred lines by RNA sequencing to provide the essential genetic toolkit for evolutionary and comparative genomic studies for P. prolifica and facilitate the reseach of placental evolution.
Project description:Genome annotation of the blackstripe livebearer Poeciliopsis prolifica, a placental Poeciliid for understanding fish placenta evolution
Project description:The blackstripe livebearer Poeciliopsis prolifica is a live-bearing fish belonging to the family Poeciliidae with high level of post-fertilization maternal investment (matrotrophy). This viviparous matrotrophic species has evolved a structure similarly to the mammalian placenta. Placentas have independently evolved multiple times in Poeciliidae from non-placental ancestors, which provides an opportunity to study the placental evolution. However, there is a lack of high-quality reference genomes for the placental species in Poeciliidae. In this study, we present a 674 Mbp assembly of Poeciliopsis prolifica in 504 contigs with excellent continuity (contig N50 7.7 Mb) and completeness (97.2% BUSCO completeness score, including 92.6% single copy and 4.6% duplicated BUSCO score). A total of 27,227 protein-coding genes were annotated from the merged data sets based on bioinformatic prediction and RNA sequencing and homology evidence. Phylogenomic analyses revealed that Poeciliopsis prolifica diverged from the guppy (Poecilia reticulata) ∼19 million years ago. Our research provides the necessary resources and the genomic toolkit for investigating the genetic underpinning of placentation.