Abstract
The scalloped spiny lobster (Panulirus homarus homarus) is an economically important decapod crustacean with high aquaculture potential. Several chromosome-level genomes of this species have been reported. But the lobster or even entire shrimps did not have the telomere-to-telomere assembly until now. Therefore, we present the first near telomere-to-telomere genome assembly of P. h. homarus generated by using pure Oxford Nanopore Technologies ultra-long (ONT) reads and Hi-C sequencing. The final assembly anchored to 73 chromosomes with a contig N50 of 41.1 Mb. 73 chromosomes contain entire 146 telomeres, of which 51 chromosomes have no gaps. A total of 38,396 protein-coding genes were predicted. BUSCO analysis showed a completeness score of 99.8%, indicating a high degree of assembly completeness. This high-quality genomic dataset provides a valuable resource for comparative genomics, evolutionary studies, and genome-assisted breeding of spiny lobsters.