A chromosome-level genome assembly of Sesamia inferens

Abstract

The pink stem borer, Sesamia inferens (Walker), is a significant polyphagous pest historically restricted to regions south of N34° latitude. However, with changes in global climate and farming practices, the distribution of this moth has progressively exceeded its traditional limit of 34° N and encompassed most regions in North China. The genetic adaptations of S. inferens remain incompletely understood due to the lack of high-quality genome resources. Here, we sequenced the genome of S. inferens using PacBio and Hi-C technology, yielding a genome assembly of 865.04 Mb with contig N50 of 1.23 Mb. BUSCO analysis demonstrated this genome assembly has a high-level completeness of 96.1% gene coverage. In total, 459.72 Mb repeat sequences (53.14% of the assembled genome) and 20858 protein-coding genes were identified. We used the Hi-C technique to anchor 1135 contigs to 31 chromosomes, yielding a chromosome-level genome assembly with a scaffold N50 of 29.99 Mb. In conclusion, our high-quality genome assembly provided valuable resource that exploring the genetic characteristics of local adaptation and developing an efficient control strategy.

Fig. 1

Heatmap of genome-wide Hi-C data of the pink borer, Sesamia inferens. Linkage group contact map informed by Hi-C sequencing data in the genome. Thirty-one linkage groups were generated after the clustering of contact map. The colour bar indicates the frequency of Hi-C interaction intensity from low (yellow) to high (red) in the plot.

Fig. 2

Circular representation of the chromosomes of the pink borer, Sesamia inferens. The genome information landscape map, from the outer ring, I: chromosome ideograms (Mb scale), II: Density of protein-coding genes; III: Density of G + C content; IV: Density of genome-wide single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) sites; V: Density of long interspersed nuclear elements (LINEs); VI: Density of long terminal repeats (LTR); VII: Density of DNA transposons.