The Construction of a Genomic Bacterial Artificial Chromosome (BAC) Library for Giant Panda (Ailuropoda melanoleuca) Enables Reference Genome Improvement

Abstract Background: De novo assembly of reference genome is becoming a foundation work and playing a crucial role in extinction species conservation. But, whether to use BAC library for de novo sequencing remain disputed because of its laborious and expensive features. Results: Here, we constructed a BAC library for giant panda with 9.1 genomic coverage and performed long-read sequencing on randomly chose 20 BAC clones. We found the combination of BAC library and long-read sequencing can further improve the reference genome of giant panda. Conclusions: Our work provides the first BAC library of giant panda with full genomic coverage and demonstrate that BAC library is helpful in reference genome improvement.