Content of review 1, reviewed on October 05, 2015

General comment:
The author has done a well-designed study of an effective hybrid genome model for Chinese herbal plant danshen. To improve the genome assembly, authors propose a novel computational pipeline for danshen combining Illumina data and PacBio data. The genome-related experiment is well-justified, and the method will help other researchers to further dig out assembling related genome in other population groups. However, I have several comments on this manuscript.

1. In the Danshen genomic DNA sequencing on Illumina platforms, what is the standard used in assigning the clean data?

- In total, 1.88 billion and 225 Gb -> 147 Gb clean data were obtained.

2. In the Gene family clustering analysis, why don't evaluate the your homology-based samples (i.e., Arabidopsis thaliana, … , and Ensembl 33 other plants)?

- To confirm or verify the 1,147 unique genes, author only use to compare the using 4 accessions including Coffea canephora (i.e., It is NOT homology-based samples) for clustering analysis. If homology based prediction of Coffea canephora analysis result is described, I think which it is another evidence for your proposal model.

Level of interest
Please indicate how interesting you found the manuscript: An article of importance in its field

Quality of written English
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    © 2015 the Reviewer (CC BY 4.0 - source).

References

    Guanghui, Z., Yang, T., Jing, Z., Liping, S., Shengchao, Y., Wen, W., Jun, S., Yang, D., Wei, C. 2015. Hybrid de novo genome assembly of the Chinese herbal plant danshen (Salvia miltiorrhiza Bunge). GigaScience.