Supporting data for ‘Draft Genome of the Protandrous Chinese Black Porgy, Acanthopagrus schlegelii’

As one of the most popular and valuable commercial marine fishes in China and East Asian countries, the Chinese black porgy (Acanthopagrus schlegelii) also known as the blackhead seabream, has some attractive characteristics, such as fast growth rate, good meat quality, resistance to diseases and excellent adaptability to various environments. Furthermore, the black porgy is a good model for investigating sex changes in fish due to its protandrous hermaphrodite. Here, we obtained a high-quality genome assembly of this interesting teleost species and performed a genomic survey on potential genes associated with the sex-change phenomenon. We generated 175.4 gigabases (Gb) of clean sequence reads using a whole-genome shotgun sequencing strategy. The final genome assembly is approximately 688.1 megabases (Mb), accounting for 93% of the estimated genome size (739.6 Mb). The achieved scaffold N50 is 7.6 Mb, reaching a relatively high level among sequenced fish species. Meanwhile, we identified 19,465 protein-coding genes, which had an average transcript length of 17.3 kb. By performing a comparative genomic analysis, we found three types of genes potentially associated with sex change, which are useful for the prediction of related genetic basis for the interesting protandrous hermaphrodite. We provided a draft genome assembly of the Chinese black porgy and discussed about the potential genetic mechanisms of sex change. These data are also an important resource for studying the biology and facilitating the molecular breeding of this economically important fish.