Project description:BmN4 cells are cultured cells derived from Bombyx mori ovaries and widely used to study transposon silencing by PIWI-interacting RNAs (piRNAs). A high-accurate genome sequence of BmN4 cells is required to analyze the piRNA pathway using RNA-seq. The genome sequence of BmN4 cells was assembled using Pacific Biosciences (PacBio) HiFi and Oxford Nanopore technology Ultralong (ONT-UL) reads. Microscopic observation and image analysis showed that BmN4 cells were octoploid on average, and the number of chromosomes per cell was highly variable. We concluded the haplotype-resolved assembly of such a complex genome would be difficult; therefore, we assembled a consensus genome sequence. RNA-seq analysis of Siwi knockdown cells also revealed that Siwi-piRISC may target Countdown (Cd), an LTR retrotransposon. By comparing the consensus genome sequence with the reads, we identified differences between haplotypes, particulary structural variants, suggesting that some transposons, including Countdown, increased their copy number in BmN4 cells.
Project description:Porcine 60K BeadChip genotyping arrays (Illumina) are increasingly being applied in pig genomics to validate SNPs identified by re-sequencing or assembly-versus-assembly method. Here we report that more than 98% SNPs identified from the porcine 60K BeadChip genotyping array (Illumina) were consistent with the SNPs identified from the assembly-based method. This result demonstrates that whole-genome de novo assembly is a reliable approach to deriving accurate maps of SNPs.