Abstract
The aphid Schlechtendalia chinensis is an economically important
insect that induces horned galls, which are valuable for medicinal and
chemical industries. So far, more than twenty aphid genomes have been
reported. However, most of those sequenced genomes are derived from
free-living aphids. Here we generated a high-quality genome assembly
form a galling aphid. The final genome assembly is 271.52 Mb, with 97%
of the assembled sequences anchored
into thirteen chromosomes. S. chinensis represents one of the
smallest aphid genomes sequenced to date. The contig and scaffold N50
values were 3.77 Mb and 20.41 Mb, respectively. The assembly included
96.9% of conserved arthropod and 98.5% of conserved Hemiptera
single-copy orthologous genes based on BUSCO analysis. A total of 14,089
protein-coding genes were predicted. Phylogenomic analysis showed thatS. chinensis diverged from the common ancestor of Eriosoma
lanigerum at approximately 57.16 million years ago. In addition, some
genes encoding salivary gland proteins were found expressed
differentially when S. chinensis forms a gall, indicating their
potential roles in gall formation and plant defense suppression. The
high-quality S. chinensis genome assembly and annotation provide
a solid genetic background for future studies to reveal the mechanism of
gall formation and to explore the interaction between aphids and their
host plants.