Abstract
Members of the family Araneidae are common orb-weaving spiders, and they produce several types of silks throughout their behaviors and lives, from reproduction to foraging. Egg sac, prey capture thread, or dragline silk possesses characteristic mechanical properties, and its variability makes it a highly attractive material for ecological, evolutional, and industrial fields. However, the complete set of constituents of silks produced by a single species is still unclear, and novel spidroin genes as well as other proteins are still being found. Here, we present the first genome in genus Araneus together with the full set of spidroin genes with unamplified long reads and confirmed with transcriptome of the silk glands and proteome analysis of the dragline silk. The catalogue includes the first full length sequence of a paralog of major ampullate spidroin MaSp3, and several spider silk-constituting elements designated SpiCE. Family-wide phylogenomic analysis of Araneidae suggests the relatively recent acquisition of these genes, and multiple-omics analyses demonstrate that these proteins are critical components in the abdominal spidroin gland and dragline silk, contributing to the outstanding mechanical properties of silk in this group of species.
Highlights
Large nocturnal spider, Araneus ventricosus, is a common orb-weaving spider found throughout Japan and East Asia that builds vertical webs
Transcriptomic as well as proteomic analyses, we reveal the unexpected complexity of A. ventricosus spider silk genetics
We report the genome of A. ventricosus sequenced using a hybrid sequencing with a combination of Nanopore, 10x GemCode and Illumina technologies
Summary
Araneus ventricosus (family: Araneidae, superfamily: Araneoidea), is a common orb-weaving spider found throughout Japan and East Asia that builds vertical webs (perpendicular to the ground). Babb and colleagues exemplified the importance of genomic data to fully understand the diversity of spidroin genes[13], using the draft genome data of N. clavipes and long read sequencing of spidroins but with long-range PCR amplicons. The finding or isolation of the new spidroin gene requires multi-omics confirmation based on a high quality genome assembled with unamplified single molecule long read sequencing. To this end, here, we present the draft genome of A. ventricosus, including full spidroin gene sets with a hybrid sequencing approach. Transcriptomic as well as proteomic analyses, we reveal the unexpected complexity of A. ventricosus spider silk genetics
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