Taxonomic insights and evolutionary history in East Asian terrestrial slugs of the genus Meghimatium

Chromosomal-scale genome assembly and annotation of the land slug (Meghimatium bilineatum)

Meghimatium bilineatum is a notorious pest land slug used as a medicinal resource to treat ailments in China. Although this no-model species is unique in terms of their ecological security and medicinal value, the genome resource of this slug is lacking to date. Here, we used the Illumina, PacBio, and Hi-C sequencing techniques to construct a chromosomal-level genome of M. bilineatum. With the Hi-C correction, the sequencing data from PacBio system generated a 1.61 Gb assembly with a scaffold N50 of 68.08 Mb, and anchored to 25 chromosomes. The estimated assembly completeness at 91.70% was obtained using BUSCO methods. The repeat sequence content in the assembled genome was 72.51%, which mainly comprises 34.08% long interspersed elements. We further identified 18631 protein-coding genes in the assembled genome. A total of 15569 protein-coding genes were successfully annotated. This genome assembly becomes an important resource for studying the ecological adaptation and potential medicinal molecular basis of M. bilineatum.