Version 5 genome assembly

Dear Chlamy Community,

The JGI is pleased to announce the release of Chlamydomonas assembly version 5.

This assembly represents a substantial improvement over version 4 and is the result of an effort led by Jane Grimwood and Jeremy Schmutz at HudsonAlpha with help from several members of the Community.

Highlights of this assembly include: contig count halved from 2739 to 1495 with 98.1% of the sequence mapped to 17 chromosomes in a much improved genetic map.

The genome sequence is available here (with release notes)

http://www.hagsc.org/restricted_access/chlamy_wga/C_reinhardtii.110311.tar.gz

l: chlamy_wga
p: 9413chlam

Repeat finding and masking is underway and a masked genome will be released soon.

Annotation efforts are underway and incorporate expression information from 1.1M new 454 ESTs from a nitrogen-free culture and Illumina-based mRNA end-capture sequences, both generated by the JGI.

Careful mapping of gene names (gene symbols), deflines and descriptions from v4 to v5 will be undertaken as soon as gene model annotations are completed.

Phytozome release of full Chlamy v5 browser due by March 2012.

Best wishes,
Simon Prochnik and the JGI team