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. 2023 Apr 11;13(4):jkad046.
doi: 10.1093/g3journal/jkad046.

The genome of the soybean gall midge (Resseliella maxima)

Gloria Melotto  1 , Megan W Jones  1 , Kathryn Bosley  2 , Nicole Flack  3 , Lexi E Frank  3 , Emily Jacobson  1 , Evan J Kipp  3 , Sally Nelson  1 , Mauricio Ramirez  1 , Carrie Walls  2 , Robert L Koch  1 , Amelia R I Lindsey  1 , Christopher Faulk  2
Affiliations

The genome of the soybean gall midge (Resseliella maxima)

Gloria Melotto et al. G3 (Bethesda). .

Abstract

The cecidomyiid fly, soybean gall midge, Resseliella maxima Gagné, is a recently discovered insect that feeds on soybean plants in the Midwestern United States. R. maxima larvae feed on soybean stems that may induce plant death and can cause considerable yield losses, making it an important agricultural pest. From three pools of 50 adults each, we used long-read nanopore sequencing to assemble a R. maxima reference genome. The final genome assembly is 206 Mb with 64.88× coverage, consisting of 1,009 contigs with an N50 size of 714 kb. The assembly is high quality with a Benchmarking Universal Single-Copy Ortholog (BUSCO) score of 87.8%. Genome-wide GC level is 31.60%, and DNA methylation was measured at 1.07%. The R. maxima genome is comprised of 21.73% repetitive DNA, which is in line with other cecidomyiids. Protein prediction annotated 14,798 coding genes with 89.9% protein BUSCO score. Mitogenome analysis indicated that R. maxima assembly is a single circular contig of 15,301 bp and shares highest identity to the mitogenome of the Asian rice gall midge, Orseolia oryzae Wood-Mason. The R. maxima genome has one of the highest completeness levels for a cecidomyiid and will provide a resource for research focused on the biology, genetics, and evolution of cecidomyiids, as well as plant-insect interactions in this important agricultural pest.

Keywords: DNA methylation; gall midge; genome assembly; nanopore; soybean.

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Conflict of interest statement

Conflicts of interest statement The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Fig. 1.
Fig. 1.
Soybean gall midge biology. a) Adult female of R. maxima. b) R. maxima larvae on soybean plant lesion. c) Soybean plant showing symptoms of R. maxima infestation in the field.
Fig. 2.
Fig. 2.
BUSCO scores. R. maxima assembly compared to other cecidomyiid genomes available from NCBI.
Fig. 3.
Fig. 3.
Whole-genome phylogeny. A reference-free alignment method was used to create this whole-genome phylogeny.
Fig. 4.
Fig. 4.
Mitochondrial structure. The mitogenome of R. maxima.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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