Bactericera cockerelli Genome sequencing and assembly

The potato (tomato) psyllid, Bactericera cockerell, is a plant sap-feeding insect which belongs to the insect superfamily Psylloidea (psyllids) within the suborder Sternorrhyncha, which includes aphids, whiteflies, and scale insects. The species in Sternorrhyncha has been exemplified by nutritional symbioses with their bacterial endosymbionts where their biology sheds light on the evolution of insect host and endosymbiont genomes. To gain additional insight into how psyllid host and endosymbiont metabolisms evolved together, we sequenced and annotated the first genome of B. cockerelli using short and long read sequencing technologies and proximity ligation, and obtained a high quality chromosomal-level genome assembly.