Chromosome-level genome assembly and annotation of Japanese anchovy (Engraulis japonicus)

The Japanese anchovy (Engraulis japonicus), a finfish with the largest biomass of a single species in the Yellow and East China Seas, plays an important pivotal role in converting zooplanktons into high trophic fish in the food web. As a result, the fish is regard as a key species in its habiting ecosystem. However, the lack of genomic resources hampers our understanding of its genetic diversity and differentiation, as well as the evolutionary dynamics. Here, we firstly report a complex chromosome-level genome assembly of E. japonicus with a large size of 1.4 Gb, with features of high repetitive sequences (54.9%), high heterozygosity (2.3%) and a number of protein-coding genes (24,405). The genome sequence exhibited a remarkable degree of completeness, valued 94.07% of the complete BUSCO. This work firstly reported the genome sequence of E. japonicus, offering the crucial resources for further studies on the genetic diversity and adaptive evolution of this species.