Genome size estimation with quantitative real‐time PCR in two Tephritidae species: Ceratitis capitata and Bactrocera oleae

Abstract

The medfly Ceratitis capitata and the olive fruit fly Bactrocera oleae belong to the Tephritidae family of Diptera, a family whose members cause severe damages in agriculture worldwide. For such insect pests, the utmost concern is their population control. The sterile insect technique (SIT) has been used in the Tephritidae family with varying degrees of success. Its efficient use usually depends on the development of genetic sexing strains and the release of only male flies. However, such advances are based on modern genetic, molecular and genomic tools. The medfly is clearly the prototype of the family, since such tools have advanced considerably, which has resulted in effective SIT efforts around the world. A whole‐genome sequencing project of this insect is already underway. In contrast, similar tools in the olive fly lag behind, even though the insect is considered a promising candidate for a next SIT target. An accurate estimate of genome size provides a preliminary view of genome complexity and indicates possible difficulties in genome assembly in whole‐genome projects. Taking advantage of a quantitative real‐time PCR approach, we determined the genome size of these two species C. capitata and B. oleae as 591 Mb (CI range: 577–605 Mb) and 322 Mb (CI range: 310–334 Mb) respectively.

Genome Sizes of Nine Insect Species Determined by Flow Cytometry and k-mer Analysis

“…E. sophia was provided by Professor Fanghao Wan at the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Science and M. cingulum was provided by Professor Jian Hu at Sun Yet-Sen University. The D. melanogaster Canton-S strain was used as the external reference (Bennett et al, 2003; Tsoumani and Mathiopoulos, 2012). The fly culture was fed on a cornmeal-agar-molasses medium and maintained under a 12L:12D photoperiod at 25 ± 2°C and 60 ± 5% RH.…”

De novo assembly of the olive fruit fly (Bactrocera oleae) genome with linked-reads and long-read technologies minimizes gaps and provides exceptional Y chromosome assembly

“…In the current manuscript we present several technological advances that were developed in order to sequence the entire genome of a non-model organism but one of high agricultural significance, the olive fruit fly (Bactrocera oleae), whose genome size was initially estimated to be 322 Mb using qPCR [23]. The olive fruit fly belongs to the Tephritidae family of insects, a family that contains some of the most important agricultural pests world-wide, such as the Mediterranean fruit fly (medfly, Ceratitis capitata), the oriental fruit fly (Bactrocera dorsalis), the Mexican fruit fly (Anastrepha ludens), the Australian Queensland fruit fly (Bactrocera tryoni) and others.…”

Transcriptome landscape of the developing olive fruit fly embryo delineated by Oxford Nanopore long-read RNA-Seq

“…The olive fly has six pairs of chromosomes which include a pair of heterochromatic sex chromosomes with the male being the heterogametic sex [12]. The B. oleae genome size was initially estimated by qPCR to be in the range of 322 Mb [13]. We previously submitted to NCBI a B. oleae genome assembled from short-reads and long-read scaffolding.…”