Chromosome-level genome assembly of the Leopard Wrasse Macropharyngodon Meleagris

Macropharyngodon meleagris is a coral reef-dwelling, benthic predatory fish renowned for its striking coloration and distinctive body patterns. It exhibits pronounced sexual dimorphism and is characterized by the presence of prominent canine-like teeth. Here, we employed PacBio HiFi sequencing combined with Hi-C assembly technology to generate a high-quality, chromosome-level genome assembly of M. meleagris. The final assembly spans 666 Mb across 24 chromosomes, with high contiguity (a contig N50 of 20.57 Mb and a scaffold N50 of 29.79 Mb). Approximately 27.63% of the genome is composed of repetitive elements. A total of 21,940 protein-coding genes were predicted, with 98.76% successfully assigned functional annotations. The assembled genome exhibits high completeness (98.7% BUSCO completeness) and accuracy (98.05% for WGS short reads, 99.86% for HiFi long reads and 92.64% for RNAseq reads).