Many lepidopteran species produce silk, cocoons, feeding tubes, or nests for protection from predators and parasites for caterpillars and pupae. Yet, the number of lepidopteran species whose silk composition has been studied in detail is very small, because the genes encoding the major structural silk proteins tend to be large and repetitive, making their assembly and sequence analysis difficult. Here we have analyzed the silk of Yponomeuta cagnagella, which represents one of the early diverging lineages of the ditrysian Lepidoptera thus improving the coverage of the order. To obtain a comprehensive list of the Y. cagnagella silk genes, we sequenced and assembled a draft genome using Oxford Nanopore and Illumina technologies. We used a silk-gland transcriptome and a silk proteome to identify major silk components and verified the tissue specificity of expression of individual genes. A detailed annotation of the major genes and their putative products, including their complete sequences and exon-intron structures is provided. The morphology of silk glands and fibers are also shown. This study fills an important gap in our growing understanding of the structure, evolution, and function of silk genes and provides genomic resources for future studies of the chemical ecology of Yponomeuta species.

Biology Centre of the Czech Academy of Sciences Institute of Entomology Ceske Budejovice Czech Republic

Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology University of Kansas Lawrence USA

European Molecular Biology Laboratory Heidelberg Germany

Faculty of Science University of South Bohemia Ceske Budejovice Czech Republic

Institute for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Dynamics University of Amsterdam Amsterdam The Netherlands

Institute of Molecular Genetics Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic Praha Czech Republic

NatureMetrics Ltd Surrey Research Park Guildford GU2 7HJ UK

School of Natural and Environmental Sciences Newcastle University Newcastle upon Tyne UK

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Comprehensive analysis of silk proteins and gland compartments in Limnephilus lunatus, a case-making trichopteran

Using the multi-omics approach to reveal the silk composition in Plectrocnemia conspersa

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