Protocols for the draft genome assembly of the eastern banjo frog Limnodynastes dumerilii dumerilii

Background: Amphibian genomes are usually challenging to assemble due to large genome size and high repeat content. The Limnodynastidae is a family of frogs native to Australia, Tasmania and New Guinea. As an anuran lineage that successfully diversified on the Australian continent, it represents an important lineage in the amphibian tree of life but lacks reference genomes.

Find: Here we sequenced and annotated the genome of the eastern banjo frog Limnodynastes dumerilii dumerilii to fill this gap. The total length of the genome assembly is 2.38 Gb with a scaffold N50 of 285.9 kb. We identified 1.21 Gb of non-redundant sequences as repetitive element and annotated 24,548 protein-coding genes in the assembly. BUSCO assessment indicated that more than 94% of the expected vertebrate genes were present in the genome assembly and the gene set.

Conclusions: We anticipate that this annotated genome assembly will advance the future study of anuran phylogeny and amphibian genome evolution.