Nasonia vitripennis (Jewel wasp, AsymCx) Assembly and Gene Annotation

About Nasonia vitripennis

The jewel wasp (Nasonia vitripennis), is an important model for parasitoid genomics. Female wasps inject venom (which is ultimately fatal) into a host pupa and lay eggs on its surface, beneath the wall of the puparium. After about 2 weeks the adult wasps, having fed on the pupa, eat their way through the puparium, where the females mate with the (flightless) males before dispersing.

Parasitoid wasps are of practical interest because there are a vast number of species, and a correspondingly vast number of host species, including many that are considered to be agricultural pests. The wasps are thus a potential biological alternative to chemical insecticides; N. vitripennis is a generalist with respect to host species, parasitizing a range of blowflies and houseflies. The Nasonia species are interfertile and are amenable to study in a laboratory, and their haplodiploid sex-determination reduces the complexity of genetic studies [2]. Combined with the genome data, these factors permit the investigation of a wide range of evolutionary topics, including speciation, development[3], and host-parasite dynamics.

Picture credit (public domain): M. E. Clark 2006

Assembly

The Nasonia vitripennis genome was sequenced and assembled at Caltech. The Nvit_psr_1.1 assembly was
imported from GenBank.

Annotation

The annotations in Ensembl Metazoa is the NCBI Nasonia vitripennis Annotation Release 104.

References

1. Functional and evolutionary insights from the genomes of three parasitoid Nasonia species.
   The Nasonia Genome Working Group. 2010. Science. 327:343-348.
2. The parasitoid wasp Nasonia: an emerging model system with haploid male genetics.
   Werren JH, Loehlin DW. 2009. Cold Spring Harbor Protocols. 2009:pdb.emo134.
3. Genome elimination mediated by gene expression from a selfish chromosome.
   Dalla Benetta E, Antoshechkin I, Yang T, Nguyen HQM, Ferree PM, Akbari OS. 2020. Science Advances. 6(14):eaaz98086.

Links

• Hymenoptera Genome Database