Editor’s Assessment

The Chinese cobra Naja atra is a highly venomous snake among the most prevalent cobra species in China. To help better understand the evolution and venom of cobra species, a 1.67Gb reference genome was sequenced, assembled and described in this work. During review some inconsistencies the data quality were fixed. With other cobra species already published, this data can be combined with these and other upcoming snake genome data to construct the evolutionary history of snakes and other reptiles as well as the genetic basis of venom.