A high-quality genome assembly from short and long reads of an endangered Brazilian stingless bee

• Grant number: 22/00844-3
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Doctorate
• Start date: August 31, 2022
• End date: February 27, 2023
• Field of knowledge: Biological Sciences - Genetics - Animal Genetics
• Principal Investigator: Maria Imaculada Zucchi
• Grantee: Patricia Azevedo
• Supervisor: Matthew Hudson
• Host Institution: Instituto de Biologia (IB). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, United States
• Associated to the scholarship: 18/24245-6 - Genomic, transcriptomic and metagenomic in populations of native stingless bees aiming the search for detoxification genes, BP.DR

Abstract

The Brazilian stingless bee Melipona scutellaris do specific pollination, the buzz pollination, and is a key species that pollinate economically important crops. However, despite its importance, the M. scutelarris population is decreasing both in number and original distribution putting them on the red list of ICMBio of endangered species. One of the main causes for this decline is the exacerbated use of pesticides since Brazil is among the biggest consumers of pesticides in the world. For the above, conservation strategies of this bee species are important for ecosystem services and human well-being. Conservation genomics has been much explored, especially with the evolution of technologies for storage, processing, analysis, and data sequencing. Besides that, the combination of long and short reads has provided quality genomes and can greatly improve the number of insects' genome assemblies. Therefore, the present proposal for an internship abroad will contribute to training in insect genome assembly using and comparing different genome assembly tools as well as programs for annotation and identification of orthologs genes. Also, the M. scutellaris genes will be compared with the A. mellifera genes searching for differences in detoxification genes. (AU)