Chromosomal-Level Genome Assembly of a True Bug, Aspongopus chinensis Dallas, 1851 (Hemiptera: Dinidoridae)

Abstract

The true bug, Aspongopus chinensis Dallas, 1851 (Hemiptera: Dinidoridae), is a fascinating insect with prolonged diapause and medicinal properties, but also a notorious pest. However, because of the lack of genomic resources, an in-depth understanding of its biological characteristics is lacking. Here, we report the first genome assembly of A. chinensis anchored to 10 pseudochromosomes, which was achieved by combining PacBio long reads and Hi-C sequencing data. This chromosome-level genome assembly was 1.55 Gb in size with a scaffold N50 of 156 Mb. The benchmarking universal single-copy ortholog (BUSCO) analysis of the assembly captured 96.6% of the BUSCO genes. A total of 686,888,052-bp of repeat sequences, 18,511 protein-coding genes, and 1,749 noncoding RNAs were annotated. By comparing the A. chinensis genome with that of 8 homologous insects and 2 model organisms, 213 rapidly evolving gene families were identified, including 83 expanded and 130 contracted gene families. The functional enrichment of Gene Ontology and KEGG pathways showed that the significantly expanded gene families were primarily involved in metabolism, immunity, detoxification, and DNA/RNA replication associated with stress responses. The data reported here shed light on the ecological adaptation of A. chinensis and further expanded our understanding of true bug evolution in general.

300 Million years of coral treaders (Insecta: Heteroptera: Hermatobatidae) back to the ocean in the phylogenetic context of Arthropoda

“…The genome of H. lingyangjiaoensis is of a medium size for true bugs (0.68–1.55 Gb) [68,69] and a similar size to those of other semi-aquatic bugs [70,71]. Comparative genomic analyses with other arthropod species show that the gene families functioning in the moulting cycle and related processes are significantly contracted, which certainly relates to their reduced life cycles.…”

Aspongopus chinensis Dallas induces pro-apoptotic and cell cycle arresting effects in hepatocellular carcinoma cells by modulating miRNA and mRNA expression

“…Adult A. chinensis specimens were collected from Kaili City, Guizhou Province, China, The specimens were authenticated by Prof. Zizhong Li (Institute of Entomology, Guizhou University, Guiyang, China) and the genome was sequenced (the accession number PRJNA729875) [ 37 ]. and maintained at −80 °C.…”

Differential expression of microRNAs in diapause and non-diapause gonads of Aspongopus chinensis Dallas (Hemiptera: Dinidoridae): implications for reproductive control

“…After the original data were sequenced with fastp for quality evaluation, Fastx Toolkit was used ( http://hannonlab.cshl.edu/fastx_toolkit/ , Developed by Meiji Biology Co., Ltd.) ( Ren et al 2022 ) to filter the obtained original data to obtain high-quality sequencing data to ensure the smooth progress of subsequent analysis. The data after quality control, namely, clean data (reads) and reference genome ( https://figshare.com/s/7bc3ec0b7fff879ecf6e ) ( Jiang et al 2021 ), were utilized to conduct a comparison to obtain mapped data (reads) for subsequent analysis, and count its distribution on each chromosome. The reference genome’s readings were subsequently compared to the miRBase and Rfam databases to obtain the known miRNA and ncRNA annotation information, respectively.…”