NCM 2022: Highly accurate telomere-to-telomere level tammar wallaby genomes and methylomes assembled from Oxford Nanopore ultra-long reads

We present two telomere-to-telomere (T2T) assemblies and epigenetic profiles of the tammar wallaby (Macropus eugenii). This wallaby has long served as the model organism for marsupials, ranging from early genetics to reproductive biology to drug discovery. An XX and XY individual were both assembled with Oxford Nanopore PromethION long reads, ultra-long reads, Hi-C, and short reads for polishing. These fully annotated genomes are extremely high quality and complete, with high Merqury QV scores of >40 and gapless chromosomes. Chromosome contigs contain complete centromeres, telomeres, and rDNA arrays. The genomes are deeply annotated, including phased diploid versions, extensive methylation data derived from Oxford Nanopore reads, and tissue-specific transcriptomics. Methylation data derived from Oxford Nanopore reads allow the exploration of epigenetics of many previously unknown genome structures. Overall, these new genome assemblies and accompanying data represents a significantly improved resource for a deeply studied model organism that will continue to provide insights into mammalian evolution.