Today is the start date for Assemblathon 2. There are next-generation datasets available for three species: a fish (a cichlid), a bird (budgerigar), and a reptile (snake). The cichlid and snake datasets are all based on Illumina data (mate pair + paired-read) and are available to download now. The parrot data has a mixture of 454 and Illumina data (enough of each to make two separate assemblies if you so desired), and will hopefully be available on our website within a day or two.

We are expecting up to 25 participants, and although people are free to assemble any or all of these datasets, we hope that participants will attempt all three if possible. To encourage this, we will hopefully have a prize for the team that produces the highest quality assemblies for all three species.

Initially, it might take some time (possibly up to a week) to download these datasets. We hope to be able to announce some mirror download sites in the coming days which might help things. The rules are simple. At the start of September we will require that each participating team would have uploaded one assembly for each dataset that they are assembling. I.e. no more than three assemblies per team.

We are extremely grateful to Illumina for generously providing the snake data, for the Broad Institute for providing the cichlid data, and for Erich Jarvis at Duke University & the BGI for providing the parrot data.

Good luck and happy assembling!