| Sumario: | Background: <i>Hippobosca camelina</i> (camel ked) is an obligate hematophagous ectoparasite that infests camels. Hematophagy inflicts painful bites leading to myiasis, anemia and pathogen transmission such as <i>Candidatus Anaplasma camelii</i>. A genome assembly for this biting flies is currently unavailable, limiting understanding of its genetics, including the chemosensory system.
Results: The assembly size for <i>Hippobosca camelina</i> female is 135.6 Mb with 17.08% repeated regions, an N50 of 1.2 Mb, a total of 2,182 contigs, a GC content of 33.5% and compleasm (Busco) completeness of 95.38% with the diptera_odb10 lineage (S:95.83%, 3148, D:0.30%, 10, F:0.30%, 10, I:0.00%, 0, M:3.56%, 117, N:3285) and <i>Hippobosca camelina</i> male had an assembly size of 133.5 Mb with 15.38% being repeats, an N50 of 419.6 Kb, 2,318 contigs, GC content of 33.5%, and compleasm (Busco) completeness of 94.70% with diptera_odb10 lineage (S:94.70%, 3111, D:0.49%, 16, F:0.85%, 28, I:0.00%, 0, M:3.96%, 130, N:3285). A total of 14,240 putative genes for <i>H. camelina</i> male and 13,496 putative genes for <i>H. camelina</i> female annotated were identified as orthologous to genes in selected dipterans that included <i>Drosophila melanogaster</i>, <i>Glossina morsitans morsitans</i>, <i>Glossina fuscipes</i>, <i>Glossina brevipalpis</i> and <i>Anopheles gambiae</i>. Chemosensory genes recovered included 4 Chemosensory specific proteins (CSPs), 18 Ionotropic receptors (IRs), 7 Gustatory receptors (GRs), 5 Odorant receptors (ORs), 9 Odorant binding proteins (OBPs) and 1 Sensory Neuron Membrane Protein (SNMP).
Conclusion: This study generated two genome assemblies for <i>Hippobosca camelina</i>. Both are smaller in size compared to <i>Melophagus ovinus</i> (Zhang et al., BMC Genomics 24, 2023) and <i>Glossina morsitans</i> (Watanabe et al., Science 344:380–6, 2014 ). The <i>Hippobosca</i> assemblies have a lower repeat content compared to <i>G. morsitans</i> and <i>M. ovinus</i>, a phenomenon that may explain the reduced assembly size. A total of 44 chemosensory genes for <i>H. camelina</i> were annotated. The obligate parasitic lifestyle, limited movement, and narrow host specificity in <i>Hippobosca camelina</i> could be related to the reduced chemosensory system genes in the six known families of chemosensory genes as reported in this study.
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