The genome of the Arctic snow alga Limnomonas spitsbergensis (Chlamydomonadales)

Abstract

Abstract Snow algae are a diverse group of extremophilic microeukaryotes found on melting polar and alpine snowfields. They play an important role in the microbial ecology of the cryosphere, and their propagation on snow and ice surfaces may in part accelerate climate-induced melting of these systems. High-quality snow algae genomes are needed for studies on their unique physiology, adaptive mechanisms, and genome evolution under multiple forms of stress, including cold temperatures and intense sunlight. Here, we assembled and annotated the genome of Limnomonas spitsbergensis, a cryophilic biciliate green alga originally isolated from melting snow on Svalbard, in the Arctic. The L. spitsbergensis genome assembly is based primarily on the use of PacBio long reads and secondly Illumina short reads, with an assembly size of 260.248 Mb in 124 contigs. A combination of 3 alternative annotation strategies was used including protein homology, RNA-seq evidence, and PacBio full-length transcript isoforms. The best merged set of annotations identified 18,277 protein-coding genes, which were 95.2% complete based on Benchmarking Universal Single-Copy Orthologs analysis. We also provide the annotated mitogenome, which is a relatively large 77.942 kb circular mapping sequence containing extensive repeats. The L. spitsbergensis genome will provide a new resource for research on snow algae adaptation, behavior, and natural selection in unique, low-temperature terrestrial environments that are under threat from climate change.