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This paper, by the Earth BioGenome Project's Sequencing and Assembly committee and a broad research community, establishes quality standards and provides recommendations for generating high-quality eukaryotic reference genome assemblies. These assemblies are critical for advancing biological sciences, enabling insights into evolution, conservation, and biomedicine, with their informational yield directly correlated to assembly quality. The work addresses the variability in outcomes from different sequencing technologies and software by proposing a unified framework for achieving reference-grade assemblies.
A community-driven framework now defines reference genome assembly quality, bridging the gap between diverse sequencing technologies and critical biological insights.
Reference genome assemblies are foundational resources across the biological sciences as they begin to expose the fundamental building blocks of each species and the molecular toolkits vital for adaptation and survival. High-quality genomes enable insights into evolution, facilitate ecosystem monitoring and protection and conservation of species, access to new biomaterials and biomedicine, advances in agri- and aquaculture, and support planetary health. The amount of information gathered from a species'genome assembly is directly dependent on its quality. However, different sequencing technologies and software solutions generate a wide range of quality outcomes. Here, the Earth BioGenome Project's Sequencing and Assembly committee, together with a large community of researchers performing eukaryote sequencing and assembly, outlines quality standards for a"reference"assembly and formulates recommendations to ensure these standards are met.