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Q&A ViewAttendees 3

Systematics, Evolution, and Biodiversity

10-Minute Paper

SysEB: Genomics

Exploring lepidopteran silk gene diversity using high fidelity long read sequencing

Sunday, October 31, 2021
9:00 AM – 9:12 AM MT
Location: Colorado Convention Center, Meeting Room 505-507
In-Person
Insect silk is an incredible and versatile biomaterial. Lepidoptera and their sister lineage Trichoptera display some of the most diverse uses of silk from spinning cocoons to prey capture nets and protective armorment. Yet little is known about the silk genes and genotypes underlying diverse silk function in most moth taxa.  One barrier to studying the genomic basis of silk is that silk fibroin genes are long, 20 kb and up, and their repetitive motifs make them challenging to sequence. Many sequencing approaches that rely on gene assembly introduce too much uncertainty for direct inference of function or for comparison of repetitive regions across taxa. Because of this, most research focuses on conserved N- and C-terminal regions of fibroin genes. Using the PacBio Sequel II system and SMRT sequencing we generated high fidelity (HiFi) long read genomic and transcriptomic sequences for Plodia interpunctella. In P. interpunctella and recently published lepidopteran HiFi genomes we found many of the primary silk genes were conserved across families and orders. Additionally, fully phased H-fibroin alleles were recovered from many HiFi genomes. There was both high allelic diversity and length variation between alleles of the same gene and variation in repetitive motif identity and order among species. Accurately sequencing through the full repetitive motif and resolving allelic variation is now possible using HiFi long read sequencing and is critical for understanding how fibroin genotypes dictate phenotypes as these regions control the strength and elasticity properties of silk fibers.