BACKGROUND Adapted to different ecological niches, moth species belonging to the Hyles genus exhibit a spectacular diversity of larval color patterns. These species diverged ∼7.5 million years ago, making this rather young genus an interesting system to study a wide range of questions including the process of speciation, ecological adaptation, and adaptive radiation. RESULTS Here we present a high-quality genome assembly of the bat hawkmoth Hyles vespertilio, the first reference genome of a member of the Hyles genus. We generated 51× Pacific Biosciences long reads with an average read length of 8.9 kb. Pacific Biosciences reads longer than 4 kb were assembled into contigs, resulting in a 651.4-Mb assembly consisting of 530 contigs with an N50 value of 7.5 Mb. The circular mitochondrial contig has a length of 15,303 bp. The H. vespertilio genome is very repeat-rich and exhibits a higher repeat content (50.3%) than other Bombycoidea species such as Bombyx mori (45.7%) and Manduca sexta (27.5%). We developed a comprehensive gene annotation workflow to obtain consensus gene models from different evidence including gene projections, protein homology, transcriptome data, and ab initio predictions. The resulting gene annotation is highly complete with 94.5% of BUSCO genes being completely present, which is higher than the BUSCO completeness of the B. mori (92.2%) and M. sexta (90%) annotations. CONCLUSIONS Our gene annotation strategy has general applicability to other genomes, and the H. vespertilio genome provides a valuable molecular resource to study a range of questions in this genus, including phylogeny, incomplete lineage sorting, speciation, and hybridization. A genome browser displaying the genome, alignments, and annotations is available at https://genome-public.pks.mpg.de/cgi-bin/hgTracks?db=HLhylVes1.

中文翻译：

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蝙蝠天蛾 Hyles vespertilio（鳞翅目：天蛾科）的高度连续的基因组组装。


背景技术属于海尔斯属的蛾类适应不同的生态位，表现出幼虫颜色图案的惊人多样性。这些物种在大约 750 万年前分化，使这个相当年轻的属成为一个有趣的系统，可以研究包括物种形成过程、生态适应和适应性辐射在内的广泛问题。结果在这里，我们展示了蝙蝠天蛾 Hyles vespertilio 的高质量基因组组装，这是 Hyles 属成员的第一个参考基因组。我们生成了 51× Pacific Biosciences 长读段，平均读段长度为 8.9 kb。 Pacific Biosciences 将长度超过 4 kb 的读数组装成重叠群，形成由 530 个重叠群组成的 651.4 Mb 组装体，N50 值为 7.5 Mb。环状线粒体重叠群的长度为 15,303 bp。 H. vespertilio 基因组的重复序列非常丰富，并且比其他家蚕总科物种（如家蚕 (Bombyx mori) (45.7%) 和 Manduca sexta (27.5%)）表现出更高的重复含量 (50.3%)。我们开发了一个全面的基因注释工作流程，从不同的证据中获得一致的基因模型，包括基因预测、蛋白质同源性、转录组数据和从头开始预测。由此产生的基因注释高度完整，其中 94.5% 的 BUSCO 基因完全存在，高于 B. mori (92.2%) 和 M. sexta (90%) 注释的 BUSCO 完整性。结论 我们的基因注释策略对其他基因组具有普遍适用性，并且 H. vespertilio 基因组为研究该属的一系列问题提供了宝贵的分子资源，包括系统发育、不完整谱系排序、物种形成和杂交。显示基因组、比对和注释的基因组浏览器可在 https://genome-public.pks 上找到。mpg.de/cgi-bin/hgTracks?db=HLhylVes1。