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.