Under the many different threats, the ecological stability of CWC ecosystems are being affected by the rapid changes in oceans globally, and these ecosystems will take hundreds or thousands of years to return to their previous level of health ( Rogers 1999). More recently, the impact of macroplastics and microplastics on CWCs has been put under the spotlight worldwide ( Chapron etВ al. Moreover, other anthropogenic activities (e.g., mineral extraction, oil and gas exploration) have noticeably affected the health of CWC ecosystems as well ( Roberts etВ al. Accidental oil spills have also inflicted an unprecedented impact on deep-sea ecosystems, which include CWCs ( White etВ al. Additionally, ocean acidification has already impacted coral reef ecosystems CWCs are highly sensitive to ocean acidification because the saturation of CaCO 3 in the deep sea is lower than shallow-water environments ( Li etВ al. 2006) (e.g., destruction by trawl fishing) ( Rogers 1999). However, CWCs are increasingly facing existential threats ( Roberts etВ al. The complexity of CWC structures provide important benthic habitat and nurseries for larvae of many deep-sea species ( Roberts and Hirshfield 2004 Roberts, etВ al. Thus, they are excellent materials for palaeoclimatic and paleoceanographic reconstructions ( Frank etВ al.

Most CWC species have long life spans and slow growth rates. 2006 Roberts and Cairns 2014), and their major source of nutrients is the microscopic zooplankton that comes from passing currents or descends from the surface of the ocean. Due to the lack of symbiotic zooxanthellae, they do not require sunlight as a source of energy ( Malakoff 2003 Roberts etВ al. Most CWCs must attach to hard-bottom substrates to grow, and only a few can live on soft sediments ( Roberts etВ al. IntroductionД¬old-water corals (CWCs) live in the cold, dark, and hypoxic deep-sea waters and are widespread around the world ( Roberts etВ al.

The key contribution of this present work is that the results will benefit the protection of this important ecosystem. Herein, we present the first draft genome of a cold-water coral ( Trachythela sp.). Previous studies have shown that the increase in human activity presents a huge threat to these vulnerable ecosystems. Overall, we believe this genome will serve as an important resource for studies on community protection for CWCs.Д¬old-water coral communities are important habitats for creatures in the deep sea. We also detected 483 expanded and 51 contracted gene families, and many of them were associated with longevity, ion transposase, heme-binding nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide, and metabolic regulators of transcription. We identified 335вЂ‰Mb (57.88% of the genome) of repetitive elements, which is a higher proportion compared with others in the Cnidarians, along with 35,305 protein-coding genes. The final assembled genome was 578.26вЂ‰Mb, which consisted of 396 contigs with a contig N50 of 3.56вЂ‰Mb, and the genome captured 90.1% of the metazoan Benchmarking Universal Single-Copy Orthologs. In total, 56 and 65вЂ‰Gb of raw reads were generated from Illumina and Nanopore sequencing platforms, respectively.

Here, we report a draft genome of Trachythela sp., which represents the first genome of CWCs to date. So far, no genome for any CWC has been reported. Cold-water corals (CWCs) are important habitats for creatures in the deep-sea environment, but they have been degraded by anthropogenic activity.

Cold waters south china sea