De Novo Genome Assembly and Annotation of an Andean Caddisfly, Atopsyche davidsoni Sykora, 1991, a Model for Genome Research of High-Elevation Adaptations

Blanca Ríos-Touma; Ralph W Holzenthal; Ernesto Rázuri-Gonzales; Jacqueline Heckenhauer; Steffen U Pauls; Caroline G Storer; Paul B Frandsen

doi:10.1093/gbe/evab286

De Novo Genome Assembly and Annotation of an Andean Caddisfly, Atopsyche davidsoni Sykora, 1991, a Model for Genome Research of High-Elevation Adaptations

Genome Biol Evol. 2022 Jan 4;14(1):evab286. doi: 10.1093/gbe/evab286.

Authors

Blanca Ríos-Touma¹, Ralph W Holzenthal², Ernesto Rázuri-Gonzales^{2

3}, Jacqueline Heckenhauer^{3

4}, Steffen U Pauls^{3

4

5}, Caroline G Storer⁶, Paul B Frandsen^{4

7}

Affiliations

¹ Facultad de Ingenierías y Ciencias Aplicadas, Ingeniería Ambiental, Grupo de Investigación en Biodiversidad, Medio Ambiente y Salud (BIOMAS), Universidad de las Américas, Quito, Ecuador.
² Department of Entomology, University of Minnesota, St. Paul, Minnesota, USA.
³ Department of Terrestrial Zoology, Entomology III, Senckenberg Research Institute and Natural History Museum Frankfurt, Germany.
⁴ LOEWE Centre for Translational Biodiversity Genomics (LOEWE-TBG), Frankfurt, Germany.
⁵ Institute of Insect Biotechnology, Justus-Liebig University, Gießen, Germany.
⁶ McGuire Center for Lepidoptera and Biodiversity, Florida Museum of Natural History, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida, USA.
⁷ Department of Plant and Wildlife Sciences, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah, USA.

Abstract

We sequence, assemble, and annotate the genome of Atopsyche davidsoni Sykora, 1991, the first whole-genome assembly for the caddisfly family Hydrobiosidae. This free-living and predatory caddisfly inhabits streams in the high-elevation Andes and is separated by more than 200 Myr of evolutionary history from the most closely related caddisfly species with genome assemblies available. We demonstrate the promise of PacBio HiFi reads by assembling the most contiguous caddisfly genome assembly to date with a contig N50 of 14 Mb, which is more than 6× more contiguous than the current most contiguous assembly for a caddisfly (Hydropsyche tenuis). We recover 98.8% of insect BUSCO genes indicating a high level of gene completeness. We also provide a genome annotation of 12,232 annotated proteins. This new genome assembly provides an important new resource for studying genomic adaptation of aquatic insects to harsh, high-altitude environments.

Keywords: Insecta; PacBio HiFi; Trichoptera; caddisfly genomics; extreme environments; high altitude.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Animals
Genome
Genomics
Holometabola*
Insecta*
Molecular Sequence Annotation
Sequence Analysis, DNA

Associated data

figshare/10.6084/m9.figshare.16836871.v1
figshare/10.6084/m9.figshare.16837963.v1