Chromosome-level genome assembly of Tarim red deer, Cervus elaphus yarkandensis

Tarim red deer (Cervus elaphus yarkandensis) is the only subspecies of red deer (of 22 subspecies) from Central Asia. This species is a desert dweller of the Tarim Basin of southern Xinjiang, China, and exhibits some unique adaptations to the dry and extreme hot climate. We report here the assembly of a Tarim red deer genome employing a 10X Genomics library, termed CEY_v1. Our genome consisted of 2.6 Gb with contig N50 and scaffold N50 of 275.5 Kb and 31.7 Mb, respectively. Around 96% of the assembled sequences were anchored onto 34 chromosomes based on the published high-quality red deer genetic linkage map. More than 94% BUSCOs complete genes (including 90.5% single and 3.6% duplicated ones) were detected in the CEY_v1 and 20,653 genes were annotated. The CEY_v1 is expected to contribute to comparative analysis of genome biology, to evolutionary studies within Cervidae, and to facilitating investigation of mechanisms underlying adaptation of this species to the extreme dry and hot climate.