Genomic data of Pandoravirus YJ1 isolated from aquatic environments in arid region of China, and comparative genomic analysis of genus Pandoravirus

Here, we report the genome of Pandoravirus YJ1, isolated from aquatic samples collected in an arid region of northwest China. We performed genome annotation, pan-genome analysis, phylogenetic reconstruction, horizontal gene transfer (HGT) validation and selection pressure analysis across 12 publicly available Pandoravirus strains.

Our study demonstrates that simple best-hit similarity searches substantially overestimate HGT frequency in pandoraviruses. Validated horizontally transferred genes are maintained under strong purifying selection, and bidirectional gene flow was detected between Pandoravirus and their hosts. This dataset contains the assembled genome sequence, gene annotation files, phylogenetic trees, pan-genome matrix and related analysis tables for Pandoravirus YJ1 and comparative genomic dataset.The complete genome sequence of Pandoravirus YJ1 is available in GenBank under accession number PZ302700.