The genome of sheep ked (Melophagus ovinus) reveals potential mechanisms underlying reproduction and narrower ecological niches

Abstract

Background Melophagus ovinus is considered to be of great veterinary health significance. However, little is known about the information on genetic mechanisms of the specific biological characteristics and novel methods for controlling M. ovinus. Results In total, the de novo genome assembly of M. ovinus was 188.421 Mb in size (330 scaffolds, N50 Length: 10.666 Mb), with a mean GC content of 27.74%. A total of 13,372 protein-coding genes were functionally annotated. Phylogenetic analysis indicated that the diversification of M. ovinus and Glossina fuscipes took place 72.76 Mya within the Late Cretaceous. Gene family expansion and contraction analysis revealed that M. ovinus has 65 rapidly-evolving families (26 expansion and 39 contractions) mainly involved DNA metabolic activity, transposases activity, odorant receptor 59a/67d-like, IMD domain-containing protein, and cuticle protein, etc. The universal and tightly conserved list of milk protein orthologues has been assembled from the genome of M. ovinus. Contractions and losses of sensory receptors and vision-associated Rhodopsin genes were significant in M. ovinus, which indicate that the M. ovinus has narrower ecological niches. Conclusions We sequenced, assembled, and annotated the whole genome sequence of M. ovinus, and launches into the preliminary genetic mechanisms analysis of the adaptive evolution characteristics of M. ovinus. These resources will provide insights to understand the biological underpinnings of this parasite and the disease control strategies.

Multiple Lineages of Nematode-Wolbachia Symbiosis in Supergroup F and Convergent Loss of Bacterioferritin in Filarial Wolbachia

“…The scaffolds which had an affiliation score greater than zero were assigned to the supergroup F. These 156 scaffolds also showed a sequencing read-coverage distribution similar to the 40 scaffolds that had exclusive hits to the w Cle genome ( supplementary fig. S8 f , Supplementary Material online), confirming their classification into supergroup F. Finally, the classification of contigs as supergroup F was validated through an additional blobplot analysis using Illumina reads from a new metagenomic sequencing of a M. ovinus sample from China ( Zhang et al 2023 ). A combination of sequencing coverage from this new analysis and the affiliation scores described above achieved a clear classification ( supplementary fig.…”

“…The soft-masked genomes obtained were used as input to gene prediction using online AUGUSTS web server ( Hoff and Stanke 2013 ). The transcriptomes for M. ovinus and C. hemipterus were assembled de novo from SRA datasets SRR17267914 ( Zhang et al 2023 ) and SRR19217017 respectively. The reads were corrected using rcorrector ( Song and Florea 2015 ) and assembled using Trinity-v2.8.5 ( Haas et al 2013 ).…”

Multiple origins of nematode-Wolbachiasymbiosis in supergroup F and convergent loss of bacterioferritin in filarialWolbachia

“…The soft-masked genomes obtained were used as input to gene prediction using online AUGUSTS web server (Hoff & Stanke 2013). The transcriptomes for M. ovinus and Cimex hemipterus were assembled de novo from SRA datasets SRR17267914 (Zhang et al 2023) and SRR19217017 respectively. The reads were corrected using rcorrector (Song & Florea 2015) and assembled using Trinity-v2.8.5 (Haas et al 2013).…”

First metagenomic sequencing for the analysis of microbial community population of Melophagus ovinus and pupae in Xinjiang, China

“…In 2022, Liu et al [23] studied adult M. ovinus from three regions of Tibet and discovered for the rst time, 23 bacterial genera and multiple DNA viruses. In 2023, Zhang et al [39] sequenced, assembled, and annotated the full genome of M. ovinus. They also discovered that contractions and losses of sensory receptors and vision-associated Rhodopsin genes were signi cant in M. ovinus, and could contribute to the removal of host-sequence contamination during the high-throughput sequencing data processing.…”