N for fungal PubMed ID:http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27766426 spore dispersal. The fungus then emerges as a fruiting body from the corpse of the insect, which matures and disperses spores of the next generation. Spread globally, Cordyceps and Ophiocordyceps fungi have been described in climates across Asia, the Americas, Europe and Australia, with many of these species having not been characterized. Although these genera are believed to contain well over 400 species of fungi, there are a few standout examples which are revered for their medicinal potential or unusual host pathogenesis. Ophiocordyceps sinensis, found in the mountains of Tibet, infects and kills ghost moth larvae to give the highly prized herbal remedy “dong chong xia cao,” which is believed to treat a plethora of disorders [1]. This prized specimen is identified by the fruiting body growing from the ground, as the infected ghost moth larvae dies situated just below the surface of the soil with its head oriented upward, from which the fruiting body emerges. Ophiocordyceps unilateralis, also known as the zombie-ant fungus, is noted for its pathogenic process in ants, which is characterized by particular behaviour?The Author(s). 2017 Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.Kramer and Nodwell BMC Genomics (2017) 18:Page 2 ofFig. 1 Phylogenetic tree showing evolutionary relationships between common fungal species and insect pathogenic species, including Cordyceps militaris, the species of interest in this study. Insect pathogenic fungi are highlighted by a blue boxconditions [13]. Indeed, laboratory culture of these organisms is a challenge due to their slow growth rates ?a genome-based approach to their natural product genes is likely essential for this field to progress. In this study, a new method of long read sequencing, Pacific Biosciences SMRT sequencing is applied to an exemplary sample from the Cordyceps genera, Cordyceps militaris, a strain isolated from butterfly pupa. The overarching goal is to provide a chromosome level genome assembly to serve as a model for the genera. Furthermore, as these fungi have the potential to produce many understudied natural products, this study is focused on the genetic potential for secondary metabolite expression in this organism.ResultsGeneral genome featuresmodifications in the host, that leaves the host ant perished with its jaw clamped to a leaf in prime location for spore dispersal [2]. Cordyceps militaris, which is a common component of supplements as it is also believed to have PubMed ID:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28461585 medicinal potential, is often used as a cheaper and more GS-9620 web readily available version of Ophiocordyceps sinensis [3, 4]. The genome of a handful of these fungi have been sequenced, however, the available assemblies are often fragmented in over 500 contigs [5?]. These assemblies do indicate that these fungi are capable to producing natural products, possibly over 30 distinct molecules per species. Only a few of these natural products from entomopathogenic fungi have be.