De novo sequencing, diploid assembly, and annotation of the black carpenter ant, Camponotus pennsylvanicus, and its symbionts by one person for $1000, using nanopore sequencing

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

17 Scopus citations

Abstract

The black carpenter ant (Camponotus pennsylvanicus) is a pest species found widely throughout North America. From a single individual I used long-read nanopore sequencing to assemble a phased diploid genome of 306 Mb and 60X coverage, with quality assessed by a 97.0% BUSCO score, improving upon other ant assemblies. The mitochondrial genome reveals minor rearrangements from other ants. The reads also allowed assembly of parasitic and symbiont genomes. I include a complete Wolbachia bacterial assembly with a size of 1.2 Mb, as well as a commensal symbiont Blochmannia pennsylvanicus, at 791 kb. DNA methylation and hydroxymethylation were measured at base-pair resolution level from the same reads and confirmed extremely low levels seen in the Formicidae family. There was moderate heterozygosity, with 0.16% of bases being biallelic from the parental haplotypes. Protein prediction yielded 14 415 amino acid sequences with 95.8% BUSCO score and 86% matching to previously known proteins. All assemblies were derived from a single MinION flow cell generating 20 Gb of sequence for a cost of $1047 including consumable reagents. Adding fixed costs for equipment brings the total for an ant-sized genome to less than $5000. All analyses were performed in 1 week on a single desktop computer.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)17-28
Number of pages12
JournalNucleic acids research
Volume51
Issue number1
DOIs
StatePublished - Jan 11 2023

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
Thanks to A.K. Barks for critically reading the manuscript. Author contributions: C.F. captured the ant. C.F. performed sequencing and all analyses. C.F. wrote the manuscript. USDA-NIFA HATCH, AES [MIN-16-12 to C.F.]; UMN College of Natural Resource Sciences. Funding for open access charge: Indirect Cost Recovery funds from my college. Conflict of interest statement. None declared.

Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2022. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Nucleic Acids Research.

PubMed: MeSH publication types

  • Journal Article
  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
  • Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S.

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