Long-reads are revolutionizing 20 years of insect genome sequencing

The first insect genome (Drosophila melanogaster) was published two decades ago. Today, nuclear genome assemblies are available for a staggering 601 different insects representing 20 orders. Here, we analyzed the best assembly for each insect and provide a “state of the field” perspective, emphasizing taxonomic representation, assembly quality, gene completeness, and sequencing technology.

We show that while genomic efforts have been biased towards specific groups (e.g., Diptera), assemblies are generally contiguous with gene regions intact. Most notable, however, has been the impact of long-read sequencing; assemblies that incorporate long-reads are ∼48x more contiguous than those that do not.