Chromosome-level genome assembly of the greenhouse whitefly (Trialeurodes vaporariorum Westwood).

Abstract

The greenhouse whitefly, Trialeurodes vaporariorum Westwood, is an agricultural pest of global importance. Here we report a 787-Mb high-quality draft genome sequence of T. vaporariorum assembled from PacBio long reads and Hi-C chromatin interaction maps, which has scaffold and contig N50 lengths of 70Mb and 500kb, respectively, and contains 18,275 protein-coding genes. About 98.8% of the assembled contigs were placed onto the 11T. vaporariorum chromosomes. Comparative genomic analysis reveals significantly expanded gene families such as aspartyl proteases in T. vaporariorum compared to Bemisia tabaci Mediterranean (MED) and Middle East-Asia Minor 1 (MEAM1). Furthermore, the cytochrome CYP6 subfamily shows significant expansion in T. vaporariorum and several genes in this subfamily display developmental stage-specific expression patterns. The high-quality T. vaporariorum genome provides a valuable resource for research in a broad range of areas such as fundamental molecular ecology, insect-plant/insect-microorganism or virus interactions and pest resistance management.