De novo genome assembly of the Tobacco Hornworm moth (Manduca sexta)

We present the new reference genome for M sexta, JHU_Msex_v1.0, applying a combination of modern technologies in a de novo assembly to increase continuity, accuracy, and completeness. The assembly is 470 Mb and is ~25x more continuous than the original assembly, with scaffold N50 >14 Mb. We annotated the assembly by lifting over existing annotations and supplementing with additional supporting RNA-based data for a total of 25,256 genes. The new reference assembly is accessible in annotated form for public use.