Chromosome‐level assembly of the brown planthopper genome with a characterized Y chromosome

Abstract

Hundreds of insect genome sequences have been reported; however, most sequencing projects have not determined the sex chromosomes, and no Y chromosomes from a heterometabolous insect have been identified and characterized to date. The brown planthopper (Nilaparvata lugens Stål) is the most economically damaging pest to rice and is also an ideal research subject for paddy ecology and functional genomics. We previously assembled a draft female genome mainly using second‐generation sequencing technologies, with a contig N50 of only 24 kb, due to the large size and excessive repetitive regions in the N. lugens genome. Here, we utilize third‐generation sequencing technologies and Hi‐C data to generate a high‐quality male N. lugens assembly with a contig N50 of 1.01 Mb, a scaffold N50 of 69.96 Mb and more than 95.6% of the assembled bases located on 16 chromosomes. Fourteen autosomes and two sex chromosomes (X + Y) were identified, filling in the gap related to the Y chromosome in heterometabolous insects. A total of 18,021 protein‐coding genes and 6423 long‐noncoding RNAs were predicted with full‐length cDNA sequencing data. All 315 of the Y chromosome genes (Y‐genes) were derived from autosomal and X‐chromosome duplications. Large‐scale RNA interference (RNAi) experiments were conducted against the N. lugens Y‐genes, demonstrating that 7 Y‐genes were essential for normal BPH development or male organ development, suggesting the importance of Y‐genes. The first identified Y chromosome in heterometabolous insects will help gain more insight into sex determination, fertility and chromosome evolution.