Skip to main content
Wellcome Open Research logoLink to Wellcome Open Research
. 2025 Mar 19;10:149. [Version 1] doi: 10.12688/wellcomeopenres.23899.1

The genome sequence of a cranefly, Tipula lateralis Meigen, 1804

Duncan Sivell 1, Olga Sivell 1; Natural History Museum Genome Acquisition Lab; Darwin Tree of Life Barcoding collective; Wellcome Sanger Institute Tree of Life Management, Samples and Laboratory team; Wellcome Sanger Institute Scientific Operations: Sequencing Operations; Wellcome Sanger Institute Tree of Life Core Informatics team; Tree of Life Core Informatics collective; Darwin Tree of Life Consortiuma
PMCID: PMC12485334  PMID: 41040648

Abstract

We present a genome assembly from a female specimen of Tipula lateralis (cranefly; Arthropoda; Insecta; Diptera; Tipulidae). The genome sequence has a total length of 701.32 megabases. Most of the assembly (89.15%) is scaffolded into 4 chromosomal pseudomolecules. The mitochondrial genome has also been assembled, with a length of 16.5 kilobases. Gene annotation of this assembly on Ensembl identified 11,388 protein-coding genes.

Keywords: Tipula lateralis, cranefly, genome sequence, chromosomal, Diptera

Species taxonomy

Eukaryota; Opisthokonta; Metazoa; Eumetazoa; Bilateria; Protostomia; Ecdysozoa; Panarthropoda; Arthropoda; Mandibulata; Pancrustacea; Hexapoda; Insecta; Dicondylia; Pterygota; Neoptera; Endopterygota; Diptera; Nematocera; Tipulomorpha; Tipuloidea; Tipulidae; Tipulinae; Tipula; Yamatotipula; Tipula lateralis Meigen, 1804 (NCBI:txid2025111)

Background

Tipula lateralis is a western Palaearctic species that is widespread across Europe reaching the Urals and the Levant in the east ( GBIF Secretariat, 2024; Oosterbroek & Theowald, 1992). In Britain this species is also widespread ranging from the south coast of England to Shetland ( Stubbs, 1992; Stubbs, 2021) and is one of the most common large craneflies to be found along riverbanks and by lake margins ( Boardman, 2016).

Tipula lateralis is a relatively slender Tipula species with streaked wings and two broad dark lateral stripes on a pale grey abdomen. Other British Yamatotipula species and the much larger Tipula ( Acutipula) vittata also have abdomens with dark lateral stripes. Tipula lateralis males can be identified by the shape of the outer clasper and tergite 9 ( Boardman, 2016; Stubbs, 1973), while details of wing shading can be used to identify the females ( Stubbs, 2021). The associated habitat may also be useful when identifying this species.

Tipula lateralis larvae are aquatic living in wet sediments, among vegetable debris at water margins, in seepages, ponds, ditches and other wet environments, only avoiding very acid or oligotrophic sites ( Stubbs, 2021). Adults are usually found by wet habitats as a result and tend to avoid shaded environments ( Stubbs, 1992). Dufour (1986) has caught adults some distance away from water bodies in Switzerland, but he interprets this as the adults having good dispersal ability. In Britain there are two generations per year with adult activity peaking in April to May and in September ( Stubbs, 1972; Stubbs, 1973; Stubbs, 1992).

White (1951) made a detailed study of Tipula lateralis and its life cycle, prompted by infestations of watercress beds in Lincolnshire. This study showed, however, that the larvae were feeding on decaying vegetable matter and were not damaging the living crop. Larvae and pupae of T. lateralis have also been keyed and illustrated by Brindle (1960). Common names proposed for this species include the “common lined Tipula” ( Stubbs, 1973) and the “common yam” ( Stubbs, 2021).

It had long been recognised that across its range Tipula lateralis might contain more than one species ( Lackschewitz, 1923). Tipula barbarensis Theowald & Oosterbroek, 1980 (Morocco), Tipula iranensis Theowald, 1978 (Iran, Turkey, Russia) and Tipula intermedia Eiroa, 1990 (Spain, Portugal) are former subspecies of T. lateralis that have been promoted to species level ( Oosterbroek, 1994; Oosterbroek et al., 2020). Stubbs (2021) considers it may be possible there is more than one taxon within the British Tipula lateralis population.

Tipula intermedia shares the same BIN as T. lateralis ( Ferreira et al., 2021), hence they cannot be reliably separated using COI barcodes and morphological characters provided by Oosterbroek et al. (2020) should be consulted for identification. To date T. intermedia has only been recorded from the Iberian Peninsula. This genome sequence of Tipula lateralis will aid research on the taxonomy of this and closely related species and help to better understand the status of T. intermedia as well as support research into the genetic identification of these species.

The high-quality genome of Tipula lateralis presented here was sequenced from a single specimen (NHMUK014446897, SAMEA9654302) from Cothill Fen National Nature Reserve, England, collected by Olga Sivell and Duncan Sivell ( Figure 1). It was identified by Duncan Sivell following Stubbs (2021) and Boardman (2016). The high-quality genome was sequenced as part of the Darwin Tree of Life Project, a collaborative effort to sequence all named eukaryotic species in the Atlantic Archipelago of Britain and Ireland.

Figure 1. Photograph of the Tipula lateralis (idTipLate1) specimen used for genome sequencing.

Figure 1.

Genome sequence report

Sequencing data

The genome of a specimen of Tipula lateralis ( Figure 1) was sequenced using Pacific Biosciences single-molecule HiFi long reads, generating 30.29 Gb from 2.42 million reads. GenomeScope analysis of the PacBio HiFi data estimated the haploid genome size at 572.99 Mb, with a heterozygosity of 2.66% and repeat content of 34.62%. These values provide an initial assessment of genome complexity and the challenges anticipated during assembly. Based on this estimated genome size, the sequencing data provided approximately 48.0x coverage of the genome. Chromosome conformation Hi-C sequencing produced 239.47 Gb from 1,585.87 million reads. Table 1 summarises the specimen and sequencing information.

Table 1. Specimen and sequencing data for Tipula lateralis.

Project information
Study title Tipula lateralis
Umbrella BioProject PRJEB66744
Species Tipula lateralis
BioSpecimen SAMEA9654302
NCBI taxonomy ID 2025111
Specimen information
Technology ToLID BioSample accession Organism part
PacBio long read sequencing idTipLate1 SAMEA9654386 abdomen
Hi-C sequencing idTipLate1 SAMEA9654388 head and thorax
Sequencing information
Platform Run accession Read count Base count (Gb)
Hi-C Illumina NovaSeq 6000 ERR12102417 1.59e+09 239.47
PacBio Sequel IIe ERR12120135 2.42e+06 30.29

Assembly statistics

The primary haplotype was assembled, and contigs corresponding to an alternate haplotype were also deposited in INSDC databases. The assembly was improved by manual curation, which corrected 78 misjoins or missing joins and removed 12 haplotypic duplications. These interventions reduced the total assembly length by 0.77%, decreased the scaffold count by 4.95%, and increased the scaffold N50 by 1.58%. The final assembly has a total length of 701.32 Mb in 671 scaffolds, with 377 gaps, and a scaffold N50 of 198.68 Mb ( Table 2).

Table 2. Genome assembly data for Tipula lateralis.

Genome assembly
Assembly name idTipLate1.1
Assembly accession GCA_963932295.1
Alternate haplotype accession GCA_963932235.1
Assembly level for primary assembly chromosome
Span (Mb) 701.32
Number of contigs 1,048
Number of scaffolds 671
Longest scaffold (Mb) 200.01
Assembly metric Measure Benchmark
Contig N50 length 3.51 Mb ≥ 1 Mb
Scaffold N50 length 198.68 Mb = chromosome N50
Consensus quality (QV) Primary: 55.7; alternate: 56.5; combined 56.1 ≥ 40
k-mer completeness Primary: 65.27%; alternate: 64.54%; combined: 98.22% ≥ 95%
BUSCO * C:95.0%[S:93.7%,D:1.3%], F:0.8%,M:4.2%,n:3,285 S > 90%; D < 5%
Percentage of assembly mapped to chromosomes 88.95% ≥ 90%
Sex chromosomes Not identified localised homologous pairs
Organelles Mitochondrial genome: 16.5 kb complete single alleles

* BUSCO scores based on the diptera_odb10 BUSCO set using version 5.5.0. C = complete [S = single copy, D = duplicated], F = fragmented, M = missing, n = number of orthologues in comparison.

The snail plot in Figure 2 provides a summary of the assembly statistics, indicating the distribution of scaffold lengths and other assembly metrics. Figure 3 shows the distribution of scaffolds by GC proportion and coverage. Figure 4 presents a cumulative assembly plot, with separate curves representing different scaffold subsets assigned to various phyla, illustrating the completeness of the assembly.

Figure 2. Genome assembly of Tipula lateralis, idTipLate1.1: metrics.

Figure 2.

The BlobToolKit snail plot provides an overview of assembly metrics and BUSCO gene completeness. The circumference represents the length of the whole genome sequence, and the main plot is divided into 1,000 bins around the circumference. The outermost blue tracks display the distribution of GC, AT, and N percentages across the bins. Scaffolds are arranged clockwise from longest to shortest and are depicted in dark grey. The longest scaffold is indicated by the red arc, and the deeper orange and pale orange arcs represent the N50 and N90 lengths. A light grey spiral at the centre shows the cumulative scaffold count on a logarithmic scale. A summary of complete, fragmented, duplicated, and missing BUSCO genes in the diptera_odb10 set is presented at the top right. An interactive version of this figure is available at https://blobtoolkit.genomehubs.org/view/GCA_963932295.1/dataset/GCA_963932295.1/snail.

Figure 3. Genome assembly of Tipula lateralis, idTipLate1.1: BlobToolKit GC-coverage plot.

Figure 3.

Blob plot showing sequence coverage (vertical axis) and GC content (horizontal axis). The circles represent scaffolds, with the size proportional to scaffold length and the colour representing phylum membership. The histograms along the axes display the total length of sequences distributed across different levels of coverage and GC content. An interactive version of this figure is available at https://blobtoolkit.genomehubs.org/view/GCA_963932295.1/blob.

Figure 4. Genome assembly of Tipula lateralis, idTipLate1.1: BlobToolKit cumulative sequence plot.

Figure 4.

The grey line shows cumulative length for all scaffolds. Coloured lines show cumulative lengths of scaffolds assigned to each phylum using the buscogenes taxrule. An interactive version of this figure is available at https://blobtoolkit.genomehubs.org/view/GCA_963932295.1/dataset/GCA_963932295.1/cumulative.

Most of the assembly sequence (88.95%) was assigned to 4 chromosomal-level scaffolds. These chromosome-level scaffolds, confirmed by Hi-C data, are named according to size ( Figure 5; Table 3). The specimen is a homogametic female. We did not identify the sex chromosome(s) as sequence data from the heterogametic sex was not available and homology is unreliable for sex chromosome identification in Diptera due to frequent sex chromosome turnover ( Vicoso & Bachtrog, 2015).

Figure 5. Genome assembly of Tipula lateralis: Hi-C contact map of the idTipLate1.1 assembly, visualised using HiGlass.

Figure 5.

Chromosomes are shown in order of size from left to right and top to bottom. An interactive version of this figure may be viewed at https://genome-note-higlass.tol.sanger.ac.uk/l/?d=ChaB9SOWRM-2_lDw95dFIw.

Table 3. Chromosomal pseudomolecules in the genome assembly of Tipula lateralis, idTipLate1.

INSDC accession Name Length (Mb) GC%
OZ010736.1 1 200.01 33
OZ010737.1 2 198.68 33
OZ010738.1 3 188.28 33
OZ010739.1 4 36.84 34
OZ010740.1 MT 0.02 23

The mitochondrial genome was also assembled. This sequence is included as a contig in the multifasta file of the genome submission and as a standalone record.

Assembly quality metrics

The estimated Quality Value (QV) and k-mer completeness metrics, along with BUSCO completeness scores, were calculated for each haplotype and the combined assembly. The QV reflects the base-level accuracy of the assembly, while k-mer completeness indicates the proportion of expected k-mers identified in the assembly. BUSCO scores provide a measure of completeness based on benchmarking universal single-copy orthologues.

The primary haplotype has a QV of 55.7, and the combined primary and alternate assemblies achieve an estimated QV of 56.1. The k-mer recovery for the primary haplotype is 65.27%, and for the alternate haplotype it is 64.54%. The combined primary and alternate assemblies display a k-mer recovery of 98.22%. BUSCO analysis using the diptera_odb10 reference set ( n = 3,285) identified 95.0% of the expected gene set (single = 93.7%, duplicated = 1.3%).

Table 2 provides assembly metric benchmarks adapted from Rhie et al. (2021) and the Earth BioGenome Project (EBP) Report on Assembly Standards September 2024. The assembly achieves the EBP reference standard of 6.8.Q55.

Genome annotation report

The Tipula lateralis genome assembly (GCA_963932295.1) was annotated externally by Ensembl at the European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI). This annotation includes 19,373 transcribed mRNAs from 11,388 protein-coding and 3,109 non-coding genes. The average transcript length is 8,869.40. There are 1.34 coding transcripts per gene and 3.72 exons per transcript. For further information about the annotation, please refer to https://beta.ensembl.org/species/7d6679ea-b5a9-4dc9-9e3e-0c4a45bc7441.

Methods

Sample acquisition and DNA barcoding

An adult female Tipula lateralis (specimen ID NHMUK014446897, ToLID idTipLate1) was collected from Cothill Fen National Nature Reserve, England, United Kingdom (latitude 51.69, longitude –1.34), using an aerial net. The specimen was collected by Duncan Sivell and Olga Sivell (Natural History Museum), identified by Duncan Sivell and preserved by dry freezing (–80 °C).

The initial identification by morphology was verified by an additional DNA barcoding process according to the framework developed by Twyford et al. (2024). A small sample was dissected from the specimen and stored in ethanol, while the remaining parts were shipped on dry ice to the Wellcome Sanger Institute (WSI) ( Pereira et al., 2022). The tissue was lysed, the COI marker region was amplified by PCR, and amplicons were sequenced and compared to the BOLD database, confirming the species identification ( Crowley et al., 2023). Following whole genome sequence generation, the relevant DNA barcode region was also used alongside the initial barcoding data for sample tracking at the WSI ( Twyford et al., 2024). The standard operating procedures for Darwin Tree of Life barcoding have been deposited on protocols.io ( Beasley et al., 2023).

Metadata collection for samples adhered to the Darwin Tree of Life project standards described by Lawniczak et al. (2022).

Nucleic acid extraction

The workflow for high molecular weight (HMW) DNA extraction at the Wellcome Sanger Institute (WSI) Tree of Life Core Laboratory includes a sequence of procedures: sample preparation and homogenisation, DNA extraction, fragmentation and purification. Detailed protocols are available on protocols.io ( Denton et al., 2023b).

The idTipLate1 sample was prepared for DNA extraction by weighing and dissecting it on dry ice ( Jay et al., 2023). Tissue from the abdomen was homogenised using a PowerMasher II tissue disruptor ( Denton et al., 2023a). HMW DNA was extracted using the Automated MagAttract v2 protocol ( Oatley et al., 2023a). DNA was sheared into an average fragment size of 12–20 kb in a Megaruptor 3 system ( Bates et al., 2023). Sheared DNA was purified by solid-phase reversible immobilisation, using AMPure PB beads to eliminate shorter fragments and concentrate the DNA ( Oatley et al., 2023b). The concentration of the sheared and purified DNA was assessed using a Nanodrop spectrophotometer and Qubit Fluorometer using the Qubit dsDNA High Sensitivity Assay kit. Fragment size distribution was evaluated by running the sample on the FemtoPulse system.

Hi-C sample preparation and crosslinking

Tissue from the head and thorax of the idTipLate1 sample was processed for Hi-C sequencing at the WSI Scientific Operations core, using the Arima-HiC v2 kit. In brief, 20–50 mg of frozen tissue (stored at –80 °C) was fixed, and the DNA crosslinked using a TC buffer with 22% formaldehyde concentration. After crosslinking, the tissue was homogenised using the Diagnocine Power Masher-II and BioMasher-II tubes and pestles. Following the Arima-HiC v2 kit manufacturer's instructions, crosslinked DNA was digested using a restriction enzyme master mix. The 5’-overhangs were filled in and labelled with biotinylated nucleotides and proximally ligated. An overnight incubation was carried out for enzymes to digest remaining proteins and for crosslinks to reverse. A clean up was performed with SPRIselect beads prior to library preparation. Additionally, the biotinylation percentage was estimated using the Qubit Fluorometer v4.0 (Thermo Fisher Scientific) and Qubit HS Assay Kit and Arima-HiC v2 QC beads.

Library preparation and sequencing

Library preparation and sequencing were performed at the WSI Scientific Operations core.

PacBio HiFi

At a minimum, samples were required to have an average fragment size exceeding 8 kb and a total mass over 400 ng to proceed to the low input SMRTbell Prep Kit 3.0 protocol (Pacific Biosciences, California, USA), depending on genome size and sequencing depth required. Libraries were prepared using the SMRTbell Prep Kit 3.0 (Pacific Biosciences, California, USA) as per the manufacturer's instructions. The kit includes the reagents required for end repair/A-tailing, adapter ligation, post-ligation SMRTbell bead cleanup, and nuclease treatment. Following the manufacturer’s instructions, size selection and clean up was carried out using diluted AMPure PB beads (Pacific Biosciences, California, USA). DNA concentration was quantified using the Qubit Fluorometer v4.0 (Thermo Fisher Scientific) with Qubit 1X dsDNA HS assay kit and the final library fragment size analysis was carried out using the Agilent Femto Pulse Automated Pulsed Field CE Instrument (Agilent Technologies) and gDNA 55kb BAC analysis kit.

Samples were sequenced using the Sequel IIe system (Pacific Biosciences, California, USA). The concentration of the library loaded onto the Sequel IIe was in the range 40–135 pM. The SMRT link software, a PacBio web-based end-to-end workflow manager, was used to set-up and monitor the run, as well as perform primary and secondary analysis of the data upon completion.

Hi-C

For Hi-C library preparation, DNA was fragmented using the Covaris E220 sonicator (Covaris) and size selected using SPRISelect beads to 400 to 600 bp. The DNA was then enriched using the Arima-HiC v2 kit Enrichment beads. Using the NEBNext Ultra II DNA Library Prep Kit (New England Biolabs) for end repair, A-tailing, and adapter ligation. This uses a custom protocol which resembles the standard NEBNext Ultra II DNA Library Prep protocol but where library preparation occurs while DNA is bound to the Enrichment beads. For library amplification, 10 to 16 PCR cycles were required, determined by the sample biotinylation percentage. The Hi-C sequencing was performed using paired-end sequencing with a read length of 150 bp on an Illumina NovaSeq 6000 instrument.

Genome assembly, curation and evaluation

Assembly

Prior to assembly of the PacBio HiFi reads, a database of k-mer counts ( k = 31) was generated from the filtered reads using FastK. GenomeScope2 ( Ranallo-Benavidez et al., 2020) was used to analyse the k-mer frequency distributions, providing estimates of genome size, heterozygosity, and repeat content.

The HiFi reads were first assembled using Hifiasm ( Cheng et al., 2021) with the --primary option. Haplotypic duplications were identified and removed using purge_dups ( Guan et al., 2020). The Hi-C reads were mapped to the primary contigs using bwa-mem2 ( Vasimuddin et al., 2019). The contigs were further scaffolded using the provided Hi-C data ( Rao et al., 2014) in YaHS ( Zhou et al., 2023) using the --break option for handling potential misassemblies. The scaffolded assemblies were evaluated using Gfastats ( Formenti et al., 2022), BUSCO ( Manni et al., 2021) and MERQURY.FK ( Rhie et al., 2020).

The mitochondrial genome was assembled using MitoHiFi ( Uliano-Silva et al., 2023), which runs MitoFinder ( Allio et al., 2020) and uses these annotations to select the final mitochondrial contig and to ensure the general quality of the sequence.

Assembly curation

The assembly was decontaminated using the Assembly Screen for Cobionts and Contaminants (ASCC) pipeline. Flat files and maps used in curation were generated via the TreeVal pipeline ( Pointon et al., 2023). Manual curation was conducted primarily in PretextView ( Harry, 2022) and HiGlass ( Kerpedjiev et al., 2018), with additional insights provided by JBrowse2 ( Diesh et al., 2023). Scaffolds were visually inspected and corrected as described by Howe et al. (2021). Any identified contamination, missed joins, and mis-joins were amended, and duplicate sequences were tagged and removed. The curation process is documented at https://gitlab.com/wtsi-grit/rapid-curation.

Assembly quality assessment

The Merqury.FK tool ( Rhie et al., 2020), run in a Singularity container ( Kurtzer et al., 2017), was used to evaluate k-mer completeness and assembly quality for the primary and alternate haplotypes using the k-mer databases ( k = 31) that were computed prior to genome assembly. The analysis outputs included assembly QV scores and completeness statistics.

A Hi-C contact map was produced for the final version of the assembly. The Hi-C reads were aligned using bwa-mem2 ( Vasimuddin et al., 2019) and the alignment files were combined using SAMtools ( Danecek et al., 2021). The Hi-C alignments were converted into a contact map using BEDTools ( Quinlan & Hall, 2010) and the Cooler tool suite ( Abdennur & Mirny, 2020). The contact map was visualised in HiGlass ( Kerpedjiev et al., 2018).

The blobtoolkit pipeline is a Nextflow ( Di Tommaso et al., 2017) port of the previous Snakemake Blobtoolkit pipeline ( Challis et al., 2020). It aligns the PacBio reads in SAMtools and minimap2 ( Li, 2018) and generates coverage tracks for regions of fixed size. In parallel, it queries the GoaT database ( Challis et al., 2023) to identify all matching BUSCO lineages to run BUSCO ( Manni et al., 2021). For the three domain-level BUSCO lineages, the pipeline aligns the BUSCO genes to the UniProt Reference Proteomes database ( Bateman et al., 2023) with DIAMOND blastp ( Buchfink et al., 2021). The genome is also divided into chunks according to the density of the BUSCO genes from the closest taxonomic lineage, and each chunk is aligned to the UniProt Reference Proteomes database using DIAMOND blastx. Genome sequences without a hit are chunked using seqtk and aligned to the NT database with blastn ( Altschul et al., 1990). The blobtools suite combines all these outputs into a blobdir for visualisation.

The blobtoolkit pipeline was developed using nf-core tooling ( Ewels et al., 2020) and MultiQC ( Ewels et al., 2016), relying on the Conda package manager, the Bioconda initiative ( Grüning et al., 2018), the Biocontainers infrastructure ( da Veiga Leprevost et al., 2017), as well as the Docker ( Merkel, 2014) and Singularity ( Kurtzer et al., 2017) containerisation solutions.

Table 4 contains a list of relevant software tool versions and sources.

Table 4. Software tools: versions and sources.

Software tool Version Source
BEDTools 2.30.0 https://github.com/arq5x/bedtools2
BLAST 2.14.0 ftp://ftp.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/blast/executables/blast+/
BlobToolKit 4.3.9 https://github.com/blobtoolkit/blobtoolkit
BUSCO 5.5.0 https://gitlab.com/ezlab/busco
bwa-mem2 2.2.1 https://github.com/bwa-mem2/bwa-mem2
Cooler 0.8.11 https://github.com/open2c/cooler
DIAMOND 2.1.8 https://github.com/bbuchfink/diamond
fasta_windows 0.2.4 https://github.com/tolkit/fasta_windows
FastK 666652151335353eef2fcd58880bcef5bc2928e1 https://github.com/thegenemyers/FASTK
Gfastats 1.3.6 https://github.com/vgl-hub/gfastats
GoaT CLI 0.2.5 https://github.com/genomehubs/goat-cli
Hifiasm 0.19.5-r587 https://github.com/chhylp123/hifiasm
HiGlass 44086069ee7d4d3f6f3f0012569789ec138f42b84
aa44357826c0b6753eb28de
https://github.com/higlass/higlass
MerquryFK d00d98157618f4e8d1a9190026b19b471055b22e https://github.com/thegenemyers/MERQURY.FK
Minimap2 2.24-r1122 https://github.com/lh3/minimap2
MitoHiFi 3 https://github.com/marcelauliano/MitoHiFi
MultiQC 1.14, 1.17, and 1.18 https://github.com/MultiQC/MultiQC
Nextflow 23.04.1 https://github.com/nextflow-io/nextflow
PretextView 0.2.5 https://github.com/sanger-tol/PretextView
purge_dups 1.2.5 https://github.com/dfguan/purge_dups
samtools 1.19.2 https://github.com/samtools/samtools
sanger-tol/ascc - https://github.com/sanger-tol/ascc
sanger-tol/blobtoolkit 0.5.1 https://github.com/sanger-tol/blobtoolkit
Seqtk 1.3 https://github.com/lh3/seqtk
Singularity 3.9.0 https://github.com/sylabs/singularity
TreeVal 1.2.0 https://github.com/sanger-tol/treeval
YaHS 1.2a.2 https://github.com/c-zhou/yahs

Wellcome Sanger Institute – Legal and Governance

The materials that have contributed to this genome note have been supplied by a Darwin Tree of Life Partner. The submission of materials by a Darwin Tree of Life Partner is subject to the ‘Darwin Tree of Life Project Sampling Code of Practice’, which can be found in full on the Darwin Tree of Life website here. By agreeing with and signing up to the Sampling Code of Practice, the Darwin Tree of Life Partner agrees they will meet the legal and ethical requirements and standards set out within this document in respect of all samples acquired for, and supplied to, the Darwin Tree of Life Project.

Further, the Wellcome Sanger Institute employs a process whereby due diligence is carried out proportionate to the nature of the materials themselves, and the circumstances under which they have been/are to be collected and provided for use. The purpose of this is to address and mitigate any potential legal and/or ethical implications of receipt and use of the materials as part of the research project, and to ensure that in doing so we align with best practice wherever possible. The overarching areas of consideration are:

•   Ethical review of provenance and sourcing of the material

•   Legality of collection, transfer and use (national and international)

Each transfer of samples is further undertaken according to a Research Collaboration Agreement or Material Transfer Agreement entered into by the Darwin Tree of Life Partner, Genome Research Limited (operating as the Wellcome Sanger Institute), and in some circumstances other Darwin Tree of Life collaborators.

Funding Statement

This work was supported by Wellcome through core funding to the Wellcome Sanger Institute (220540) and the Darwin Tree of Life Discretionary Award [218328, <a href=https://doi.org/10.35802/218328>https://doi.org/10.35802/218328 </a>].

The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

[version 1; peer review: 2 approved]

Data availability

European Nucleotide Archive: Tipula lateralis. Accession number PRJEB66744; https://identifiers.org/ena.embl/PRJEB66744. The genome sequence is released openly for reuse. The Tipula lateralis genome sequencing initiative is part of the Darwin Tree of Life (DToL) project. All raw sequence data and the assembly have been deposited in INSDC databases. The genome will be annotated using available RNA-Seq data and presented through the Ensembl pipeline at the European Bioinformatics Institute. Raw data and assembly accession identifiers are reported in Table 1 and Table 2.

Author information

Members of the Natural History Museum Genome Acquisition Lab are listed here: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.12159242.

Members of the Darwin Tree of Life Barcoding collective are listed here: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.12158331.

Members of the Wellcome Sanger Institute Tree of Life Management, Samples and Laboratory team are listed here: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.12162482.

Members of Wellcome Sanger Institute Scientific Operations: Sequencing Operations are listed here: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14870789.

Members of the Wellcome Sanger Institute Tree of Life Core Informatics team are listed here: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.12160324.

Members of the Tree of Life Core Informatics collective are listed here: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.12205391.

Members of the Darwin Tree of Life Consortium are listed here: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4783558.

References

  1. Abdennur N, Mirny LA: Cooler: scalable storage for Hi-C data and other genomically labeled arrays. Bioinformatics. 2020;36(1):311–316. 10.1093/bioinformatics/btz540 [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  2. Allio R, Schomaker-Bastos A, Romiguier J, et al. : MitoFinder: efficient automated large-scale extraction of mitogenomic data in target enrichment phylogenomics. Mol Ecol Resour. 2020;20(4):892–905. 10.1111/1755-0998.13160 [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  3. Altschul SF, Gish W, Miller W, et al. : Basic Local Alignment Search Tool. J Mol Biol. 1990;215(3):403–410. 10.1016/S0022-2836(05)80360-2 [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  4. Bateman A, Martin MJ, Orchard S, et al. : UniProt: the Universal Protein Knowledgebase in 2023. Nucleic Acids Res. 2023;51(D1):D523–D531. 10.1093/nar/gkac1052 [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  5. Bates A, Clayton-Lucey I, Howard C: Sanger Tree of Life HMW DNA fragmentation: diagenode Megaruptor ®3 for LI PacBio. protocols.io. 2023. 10.17504/protocols.io.81wgbxzq3lpk/v1 [DOI] [Google Scholar]
  6. Beasley J, Uhl R, Forrest LL, et al. : DNA barcoding SOPs for the Darwin Tree of Life project. protocols.io. 2023; [Accessed 25 June 2024]. 10.17504/protocols.io.261ged91jv47/v1 [DOI] [Google Scholar]
  7. Boardman A: Shropshire craneflies.Field Studies Council Publications,2016. Reference Source
  8. Brindle A: The larvae and pupae of the British Tipulinae (Diptera: Tipulidae). Transactions of the Society of British Entomology. 1960;14(3):63–114. [Google Scholar]
  9. Buchfink B, Reuter K, Drost HG: Sensitive protein alignments at Tree-of-Life scale using DIAMOND. Nat Methods. 2021;18(4):366–368. 10.1038/s41592-021-01101-x [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  10. Challis R, Kumar S, Sotero-Caio C, et al. : Genomes on a Tree (GoaT): a versatile, scalable search engine for genomic and sequencing project metadata across the eukaryotic Tree of Life [version 1; peer review: 2 approved]. Wellcome Open Res. 2023;8:24. 10.12688/wellcomeopenres.18658.1 [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  11. Challis R, Richards E, Rajan J, et al. : BlobToolKit – interactive quality assessment of genome assemblies. G3 (Bethesda). 2020;10(4):1361–1374. 10.1534/g3.119.400908 [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  12. Cheng H, Concepcion GT, Feng X, et al. : Haplotype-resolved de novo assembly using phased assembly graphs with hifiasm. Nat Methods. 2021;18(2):170–175. 10.1038/s41592-020-01056-5 [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  13. Crowley L, Allen H, Barnes I, et al. : A sampling strategy for genome sequencing the British terrestrial arthropod fauna [version 1; peer review: 2 approved]. Wellcome Open Res. 2023;8:123. 10.12688/wellcomeopenres.18925.1 [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  14. da Veiga Leprevost F, Grüning BA, Alves Aflitos S, et al. : BioContainers: an open-source and community-driven framework for software standardization. Bioinformatics. 2017;33(16):2580–2582. 10.1093/bioinformatics/btx192 [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  15. Danecek P, Bonfield JK, Liddle J, et al. : Twelve years of SAMtools and BCFtools. GigaScience. 2021;10(2): giab008. 10.1093/gigascience/giab008 [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  16. Denton A, Oatley G, Cornwell C, et al. : Sanger Tree of Life sample homogenisation: PowerMash. protocols.io. 2023a. 10.17504/protocols.io.5qpvo3r19v4o/v1 [DOI] [Google Scholar]
  17. Denton A, Yatsenko H, Jay J, et al. : Sanger Tree of Life wet laboratory protocol collection V.1. protocols.io. 2023b. 10.17504/protocols.io.8epv5xxy6g1b/v1 [DOI] [Google Scholar]
  18. Di Tommaso P, Chatzou M, Floden EW, et al. : Nextflow enables reproducible computational workflows. Nat Biotechnol. 2017;35(4):316–319. 10.1038/nbt.3820 [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  19. Diesh C, Stevens GJ, Xie P, et al. : JBrowse 2: a modular genome browser with views of synteny and structural variation. Genome Biol. 2023;24(1): 74. 10.1186/s13059-023-02914-z [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  20. Dufour C: Documenta Faunistica Helvetiae, 2. Les Tipulidae de Suisse (Diptera, Nematocera).Neuchâtel: Centre Suisse de Cartographie de la Faune,1986. Reference Source [Google Scholar]
  21. Ewels P, Magnusson M, Lundin S, et al. : MultiQC: summarize analysis results for multiple tools and samples in a single report. Bioinformatics. 2016;32(19):3047–3048. 10.1093/bioinformatics/btw354 [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  22. Ewels PA, Peltzer A, Fillinger S, et al. : The nf-core framework for community-curated bioinformatics pipelines. Nat Biotechnol. 2020;38(3):276–278. 10.1038/s41587-020-0439-x [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  23. Ferreira S, Oosterbroek P, Stary J, et al. : The InBIO Barcoding Initiative database: DNA barcodes of Portuguese diptera 02 - Limoniidae, Pediciidae and Tipulidae. Biodivers Data J. 2021;9: e69841. 10.3897/BDJ.9.e69841 [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  24. Formenti G, Abueg L, Brajuka A, et al. : Gfastats: conversion, evaluation and manipulation of genome sequences using assembly graphs. Bioinformatics. 2022;38(17):4214–4216. 10.1093/bioinformatics/btac460 [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  25. GBIF Secretariat: Tipula lateralis Meigen, 1804.In: GBIF Backbone Taxonomy. 2024; [Accessed 17 February 2025]. Reference Source
  26. Grüning B, Dale R, Sjödin A, et al. : Bioconda: sustainable and comprehensive software distribution for the life sciences. Nat Methods. 2018;15(7):475–476. 10.1038/s41592-018-0046-7 [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  27. Guan D, McCarthy SA, Wood J, et al. : Identifying and removing haplotypic duplication in primary genome assemblies. Bioinformatics. 2020;36(9):2896–2898. 10.1093/bioinformatics/btaa025 [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  28. Harry E: PretextView (Paired REad TEXTure Viewer): a desktop application for viewing pretext contact maps. 2022. Reference Source
  29. Howe K, Chow W, Collins J, et al. : Significantly improving the quality of genome assemblies through curation. GigaScience. 2021;10(1): giaa153. 10.1093/gigascience/giaa153 [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  30. Jay J, Yatsenko H, Narváez-Gómez JP, et al. : Sanger Tree of Life sample preparation: triage and dissection. protocols.io. 2023. 10.17504/protocols.io.x54v9prmqg3e/v1 [DOI] [Google Scholar]
  31. Kerpedjiev P, Abdennur N, Lekschas F, et al. : HiGlass: web-based visual exploration and analysis of genome interaction maps. Genome Biol. 2018;19(1): 125. 10.1186/s13059-018-1486-1 [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  32. Kurtzer GM, Sochat V, Bauer MW: Singularity: scientific containers for mobility of compute. PLoS One. 2017;12(5): e0177459. 10.1371/journal.pone.0177459 [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  33. Lackschewitz P: Der Formenkreis der Tipula lateralis Meig. (s. lat) im Ostbaltischen Gebiet. Arbeiten Des Naturforscher-Vereins Zu Riga. 1923;15:1–16. Reference Source [Google Scholar]
  34. Lawniczak MKN, Davey RP, Rajan J, et al. : Specimen and sample metadata standards for biodiversity genomics: a proposal from the Darwin Tree of Life project [version 1; peer review: 2 approved with reservations]. Wellcome Open Res. 2022;7:187. 10.12688/wellcomeopenres.17605.1 [DOI] [Google Scholar]
  35. Li H: Minimap2: pairwise alignment for nucleotide sequences. Bioinformatics. 2018;34(18):3094–3100. 10.1093/bioinformatics/bty191 [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  36. Manni M, Berkeley MR, Seppey M, et al. : BUSCO update: novel and streamlined workflows along with broader and deeper phylogenetic coverage for scoring of eukaryotic, prokaryotic, and viral genomes. Mol Biol Evol. 2021;38(10):4647–4654. 10.1093/molbev/msab199 [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  37. Merkel D: Docker: lightweight Linux containers for consistent development and deployment. Linux J. 2014;2014(239): 2, [Accessed 2 April 2024]. Reference Source [Google Scholar]
  38. Oatley G, Denton A, Howard C: Sanger Tree of Life HMW DNA extraction: automated MagAttract v.2. protocols.io. 2023a. 10.17504/protocols.io.kxygx3y4dg8j/v1 [DOI] [Google Scholar]
  39. Oatley G, Sampaio F, Howard C: Sanger Tree of Life fragmented DNA clean up: automated SPRI. protocols.io. 2023b. 10.17504/protocols.io.q26g7p1wkgwz/v1 [DOI] [Google Scholar]
  40. Oosterbroek P: Notes on western Palaearctic species of the Tipula (Yamatotipula) lateralis group, with the description of a new species from Turkey (Diptera: Tipulidae). Eur J Entomol. 1994;91(4):429–435. Reference Source [Google Scholar]
  41. Oosterbroek P, Starý J, Andrade R, et al. : The Craneflies of continental Portugal (Diptera, Limoniidae, Pediciidae, Tipulidae) including 28 species new for Portugal. Bol Asoc Esp Entomol. 2020;44(3–4):317–358. Reference Source [Google Scholar]
  42. Oosterbroek P, Theowald B: Family Tipulidae.In: Soós, Á., Papp, L., and Oosterbroek, P. (eds.) Catalogue of palaearctic diptera.Elsevier,1992;1:56–78. [Google Scholar]
  43. Pereira L, Sivell O, Sivess L, et al. : DToL taxon-specific standard operating procedure for the terrestrial and freshwater arthropods working group. 2022. 10.17504/protocols.io.261gennyog47/v1 [DOI] [Google Scholar]
  44. Pointon DL, Eagles W, Sims Y, et al. : sanger-tol/treeval v1.0.0 – Ancient Atlantis. 2023. 10.5281/zenodo.10047654 [DOI] [Google Scholar]
  45. Quinlan AR, Hall IM: BEDTools: a flexible suite of utilities for comparing genomic features. Bioinformatics. 2010;26(6):841–842. 10.1093/bioinformatics/btq033 [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  46. Ranallo-Benavidez TR, Jaron KS, Schatz MC: GenomeScope 2.0 and Smudgeplot for reference-free profiling of polyploid genomes. Nat Commun. 2020;11(1): 1432. 10.1038/s41467-020-14998-3 [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  47. Rao SSP, Huntley MH, Durand NC, et al. : A 3D map of the human genome at kilobase resolution reveals principles of chromatin looping. Cell. 2014;159(7):1665–1680. 10.1016/j.cell.2014.11.021 [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  48. Rhie A, McCarthy SA, Fedrigo O, et al. : Towards complete and error-free genome assemblies of all vertebrate species. Nature. 2021;592(7856):737–746. 10.1038/s41586-021-03451-0 [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  49. Rhie A, Walenz BP, Koren S, et al. : Merqury: reference-free quality, completeness, and phasing assessment for genome assemblies. Genome Biol. 2020;21(1): 245. 10.1186/s13059-020-02134-9 [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  50. Stubbs AE: Introduction to craneflies. The Identification of British Craneflies. AES Bulletin. 1972;31:83–93. [Google Scholar]
  51. Stubbs AE: Introduction to craneflies – Part III, spring and summer Tipula species. AES Bulletin. 1973;32:14–23. [Google Scholar]
  52. Stubbs AE: Provisional atlas of long-palped craneflies (Diptera: Tipulinae) of Britain and Ireland.Biological Records Centre, Monks Wood,1992. Reference Source
  53. Stubbs AE: British craneflies.British Entomological and Natural History Society,2021. Reference Source [Google Scholar]
  54. Twyford AD, Beasley J, Barnes I, et al. : A DNA barcoding framework for taxonomic verification in the Darwin Tree of Life project [version 1; peer review: 2 approved]. Wellcome Open Res. 2024;9:339. 10.12688/wellcomeopenres.21143.1 [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  55. Uliano-Silva M, Ferreira JGRN, Krasheninnikova K, et al. : MitoHiFi: a python pipeline for mitochondrial genome assembly from PacBio high fidelity reads. BMC Bioinformatics. 2023;24(1): 288. 10.1186/s12859-023-05385-y [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  56. Vasimuddin M, Misra S, Li H, et al. : Efficient architecture-aware acceleration of BWA-MEM for multicore systems.In: 2019 IEEE International Parallel and Distributed Processing Symposium (IPDPS).IEEE,2019;314–324. 10.1109/IPDPS.2019.00041 [DOI] [Google Scholar]
  57. Vicoso B, Bachtrog D: Numerous transitions of sex chromosomes in Diptera. PLoS Biol. 2015;13(4): e1002078. 10.1371/journal.pbio.1002078 [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  58. White JH: Observations on the life history and biology of Tipula lateralis Meig. Ann Appl Biol. 1951;38(4):847–858. 10.1111/j.1744-7348.1951.tb07855.x [DOI] [Google Scholar]
  59. Zhou C, McCarthy SA, Durbin R: YaHS: Yet another Hi-C Scaffolding tool. Bioinformatics. 2023;39(1): btac808. 10.1093/bioinformatics/btac808 [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
Wellcome Open Res. 2025 May 2. doi: 10.21956/wellcomeopenres.26366.r121603

Reviewer response for version 1

Markus Friedrich 1

This report describes the chromosome-level sequencing of a female specimen of the cranefly species Tipula lateralis (Meigen, 1804) for the Darwin Tree of Life initiative. Data generation, processing, and curation are state of the art quality.

Comments:

1. "Tipula intermedia shares the same BIN..." Define BIN

2. Review inconsistent use of Tipula lateralis vs T. lateralis throughout major text body.

3. Define INSDC

4. Fig. 4: buscogenes = BUSCO genes

5. The average transcript length is 8,869.40 ribonucleotides?

6. "At a minimum, samples were required to have an average fragment size exceeding 8 kb and a total mass over 400 ng to proceed to the low input SMRTbell Prep Kit 3.0 protocol (Pacific Biosciences, California, USA), depending on genome size and sequencing depth required."

Only one sample (abdomen of idTipLate1) was subjected to PacBio HiFi sequencing.

Are sufficient details of methods and materials provided to allow replication by others?

Yes

Is the rationale for creating the dataset(s) clearly described?

Yes

Are the datasets clearly presented in a useable and accessible format?

Yes

Are the protocols appropriate and is the work technically sound?

Yes

Reviewer Expertise:

Comparative genomics

I confirm that I have read this submission and believe that I have an appropriate level of expertise to confirm that it is of an acceptable scientific standard.

Wellcome Open Res. 2025 Apr 2. doi: 10.21956/wellcomeopenres.26366.r121600

Reviewer response for version 1

Marcus Stensmyr 1

The submitted manuscript presents a high quality genome assembly of a cranefly (Tipula lateralis), sequenced as part of the Darwin Tree of Life project. The genome has been sequenced, assembled, and annotated using the state-of-the-art pipeline employed by the DToL project. Kudos to the authors for adding a nice and informative introduction, which these types of papers typically lack (at least the ones I have reviewed...). The provision of an additional crane fly genome assembly will aid efforts understanding the evolutionary history of this fun group of dipterans.

Are sufficient details of methods and materials provided to allow replication by others?

Yes

Is the rationale for creating the dataset(s) clearly described?

Yes

Are the datasets clearly presented in a useable and accessible format?

Yes

Are the protocols appropriate and is the work technically sound?

Yes

Reviewer Expertise:

Diptera neurogenetics and genomics

I confirm that I have read this submission and believe that I have an appropriate level of expertise to confirm that it is of an acceptable scientific standard.

Associated Data

    This section collects any data citations, data availability statements, or supplementary materials included in this article.

    Data Availability Statement

    European Nucleotide Archive: Tipula lateralis. Accession number PRJEB66744; https://identifiers.org/ena.embl/PRJEB66744. The genome sequence is released openly for reuse. The Tipula lateralis genome sequencing initiative is part of the Darwin Tree of Life (DToL) project. All raw sequence data and the assembly have been deposited in INSDC databases. The genome will be annotated using available RNA-Seq data and presented through the Ensembl pipeline at the European Bioinformatics Institute. Raw data and assembly accession identifiers are reported in Table 1 and Table 2.


    Articles from Wellcome Open Research are provided here courtesy of The Wellcome Trust

    RESOURCES