Abstract

   Pangenomes provide a robust and comprehensive portrayal of genetic
   diversity in humans, but Arab populations remain underrepresented. We
   present a preliminary UAE-based Arab Pangenome Reference (UPR)
   utilizing 53 individuals of diverse Arab ethnicities residing in the
   United Arab Emirates. We assembled nuclear and mitochondrial pangenomes
   using 35.27X high-fidelity long reads, 54.22X ultralong reads and
   65.46X Hi-C reads. This approach yielded contiguous haplotype-phased de
   novo assemblies of exceptional quality, with an average N50 of
   124.28 Mb. We discovered 111.96 million base pairs of previously
   uncharacterized euchromatic sequences absent from existing human
   pangenomes, the T2T-CHM13 and GRCh38 reference human genomes, and other
   public datasets. Moreover, we identified 8.94 million
   population-specific small variants and 235,195 structural variants
   within the Arab pangenome, not present in linear and pangenome
   references and public datasets. We detected 883 gene duplications,