The kelp grouper, Epinephelus moara, is a carnivorous coral reef fish widely distributing in the Indo-Pacific Oceans. Compared to other grouper species, E. moara is featured for its wide tolerance to environmental stresses, such as temperature and salinity. In addition, it is popularly used as a breeding species for hybrid grouper production. Here, we report the de novo sequencing and assembly of E. moara genome using a combination of Illumina pair-ended, PacBio and Hi-C technologies. We generated a 1.08 Gb genome assembly with a scaffold N50 of 44.93 Mb and contig N50 of 2.22 Mb. The scaffolds and contigs were clustered and oriented into 24 chromosomes, and 24,135 protein-coding genes were predicted, among which 96.8% were annotated. More than 95.6% of the conserved complete genes were successfully retrieved by BUSCO analysis. Comparative genomic analyses showed that some expanded gene families in the E. moara genome were significantly enriched in innate immune pathways. The E. moara genome provides a valuable resource for genetic improvement and genomic breeding of groupers, as well as evolutionary and comparative study with other grouper species.

海带石斑鱼（Epinephelus moara）是一种广泛分布于印度洋-太平洋的珊瑚礁肉食性鱼类。与其他石斑鱼物种相比，E. moara的特点是对环境压力（如温度和盐度）具有广泛的耐受性。此外，它被广泛用作杂交石斑鱼生产的育种品种。在这里，我们报告了E. moara 的从头测序和组装使用 Illumina 双端、PacBio 和 Hi-C 技术的组合来分析基因组。我们生成了一个 1.08 Gb 的基因组组装，其支架 N50 为 44.93 Mb，重叠群 N50 为 2.22 Mb。支架和重叠群被聚类并定向成24条染色体，预测了24,135个蛋白质编码基因，其中96.8%被注释。BUSCO分析成功检索到95.6%以上的保守完整基因。比较基因组分析表明，E. moara基因组中的一些扩展基因家族在先天免疫途径中显着富集。该E. moara基因组提供了遗传改良和石斑鱼基因组育种，以及与其他石斑鱼进化和比较研究的宝贵资源。