Sitobion miscanthi Genome sequencing and assembly. Sitobion miscanthi

The grain aphid Sitobion miscanthi (Figure1), a cereal specialist, is a globally distributed sap-sucking pest of wheat and a dominant species in wheat-growing regions across China. It threatens wheat production in various ways such as pillaging nutrition from the host, transmitting pathogenic plant viruses, and defecating sticky honeydew that further obstructs photosynthesis and reduces wheat product quality. Together with its highly specialized host scope, the simple parasitic life cycle, pleomorphism, and alternation of complete and incomplete life cycles make S. miscanthi an ideal model insect for both basic and applied research. This species was misidentified as Sitobion avenae in China. Because morphological characteristics are inconclusive for identification purposes [2], we sought to publish the genome information for S. miscanthi here. However, no genome information for this species has been published. Here, we report the chromosome-level genome sequence of the S. miscanthi isolate Langfang-1 with greatly improved assembly data indexes than other scaffold-level genome of aphids. Most of the sequences assembled into 9 scaffolds, which supported a 2n=18 karyotype for S. miscanthi.