About the Project

The HGSC is sequencing three species of parasitic wasp: Nasonia vitripennis, Nasonia giraulti, and Nasonia longicornis. Nasonia is a genus containing these three parasitic wasps whose hosts include house flies and other filth flies. It is a genetic model for all parasitic wasps which are used in the biological control of insect pests. Because of its usable haploid genetics, Nasonia is a facile model for discovering the genes behind complex traits. Nasonia will be the second representative of the Hymenoptera to be sequenced at the HGSC. N. vitripennis has been sequenced using a WGS strategy with a six-fold sequence coverage, whereas N. giraulti and N. longicornis are being sampled at single-fold sequence coverage, and will be aligned to the N. vitripennis assembly to identify and localize sequence markers necessary for mapping quantitative traits to individual gene loci.

The sequencing strains for N. vitripennis, N. giraulti, and N. Longicornis were provided by John (Jack) Werren who was lead author on the Nasonia genome white paper. Further details on the biology of Nasonia can be found here.

Funding for this project has been provided by: the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI U54 HG003273), which is part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

Access to the Data

Genome Assembly

Version 1.0 of the assembly, Nvit_1.0 is available for download using the FTP Data link in the sidebar. The assembly is described in detail in the README in that directory. Nvit_1.0 is a preliminary genome assembly that includes large insert paired end information and assembly of repetitive sequences but has not been localized to chromosomes.

BLAST Searches

The BLAST link is located in the sidebar.

• Linearized scaffold sequences
• Assembled contigs

Traces are available from the NCBI Trace Archive by using the link in the sidebar, or by using NCBI MegaBLAST with a same species or cross species query.

Resources

Nasonia Genome White Paper

Conditions for use

Selected PubMed Citations

Savard, J, Tautz, D, Richards, S, Weinstock, GM, Gibbs, RA, Werren, JH, Tettelin, H, Lercher, MJ. Phylogenomic analysis reveals bees and wasps (Hymenoptera) at the base of the radiation of Holometabolous insects.  Genome Res.  2006 Nov; 16(11):1334-8. [PubMed]