[Coral-List] Draft genome assemblies for Acropora palmata and Acropora cervicornis available

[Sheila Kitchen]

Dear Colleagues,

We are excited to announce the release of our draft genome assemblies of
the threatened elkhorn coral, *Acropora palmata* and the staghorn
coral, *Acropora
cervicornis*. Although we are continuing to improve these assemblies, they
already match or exceed those of the other published coral genomes for many
quality metrics and so, in the interest of open data access and
accelerating scientific progress we are making them available ahead of
publication.

We generated this data as part of a collaborative project with Webb Miller
at Pennsylvania State University and Nicole Fogarty's Lab at NOVA
Southeastern University. Because these assemblies are still undergoing
refinement and have not yet been published, please register before using
the data so that we can reach you with updates and coordinate interests.
Please send a request via email with your intended use of the data to Iliana
Baums <baums at psu.edu> (baums [at] psu.edu), and cc Meghann Devlin-Durante
<mkd143 at psu.edu> (mkd143 [at] psu.edu) and Sheila Kitchen <sak89 at psu.edu> (sak
[at] psu.edu). Major funding for this project was provided by the National
Science Foundation, OCE-1537959.

If you are attending the Society for Integrative Biology annual meeting
<http://www.sicb.org/meetings/2018/> this week, Sheila and Iliana will be
presenting some of the results that have come from these new genomic
resources. Come chat with us about genomes, corals, and possible projects.


Cheers,

Sheila and Iliana