This note is really minimal. There is not even a legend for table 1 that gives the reader the units for the values in, for example, the N50 column. Other Gigascience Data Notes are a little more explanatory. A little more analysis of the data would help the reader. Then authors describe an unusual sequencing strategy with no supporting explanation. Why pool DNA from two individuals and offspring? This increases the number of polymorphic genomes in the sample to 4 plus meiotic recombinants. Assembling the large polymorphic genomes of invertebrates is hard enough without confounding it further. This should be explained. Acanthaster planci (Asteroidea) genome sequence has not been published as the paper says; only one scaffold is in the reference cited.

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It is noteworthy of these authors to assemble and post these genomes. Otherwise they would be lost in the guts of Genbank. I'm loath to criticize them further. But they should post their best draft assemblies on the Ryan web site so others can evaluate them as a whole. Another minor point to the authors: the gene predictions from NCBI for S. purpuratus are electronically generated and not cross referenced to those on Echinobase which are derived from 22 individual tissue samples by RNA-seq. The sequences are pretty much the same but the annotation on Echinobase is much better. One can download the gene models from Echinobase.

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http://www.gigasciencejournal.com/imedia/9846706152011363_comment.pdf