A de novo genome assembly for Arctium lappa

Burdock (Arctium lappa) has a long medicinal history with and is being promoted and recommended as a healthy and nutritive food with great economic importance. However, genetic resources of burdock are insufficient for analysis of molecular biology and genetic functions. Here we combined Illumina and PacBio sequences to generate the first draft genome assembly of A. lappa. The assembled genome is about 1.79 Gb with contig N50 sizes of 6.88 Mb. The 1.70 Gb (95.4%) of the contig sequences were anchored onto 18 chromosomes using Hic data, the scaffold N50 was improved to be 91.64 Mb. We further 1.12Gb (68.46%) repetitive sequences and 32,771 protein-coding genes. These data can be used to develop new methods/ tools to better assemble complex genomes, help find genes related to the quality of burdock, and provide a basis for the research of burdock genetic diversity and germplasm resources evaluation.