Manduca sexta | i5k Workspace@NAL

i5k Workspace@NAL

U.S. Department of Agriculture

Summary

Type	organism
Genus	Manduca
Species	sexta
Common Name	Tobacco hornworm
Description	Manduca sexta (Lepidoptera: Sphingidae) is commonly known as the tobacco hornworm or Carolina sphinx moth. M. sexta serves as one of the most important insect models for invertebrate physiology, biochemistry, and molecular biology. Studies on M. sexta over the past 40+ years have included many areas of insect biology, including neurobiology, endocrine regulation, chemical sensing (chemoreception, sexual and feeding attractants), behavior, development, metamorphosis, immunology, antimicrobial defenses, locomotion and flight, digestive and gut physiology, toxicology, parasitism, microbial interactions, pathology, and plant-insect interactions. As such, M. sexta represents a powerful, well developed, and tractable experimental system. In nature, M. sexta larvae feed on plants in the family Solanaceae. Larvae grow to a very large size, reaching weights of 10-12 grams in the 5th larval instar. At the end of the last larval instar, larvae burrow into the soil and pupate. After emergence, adults feed on the nectar from flowers. Adults are active and fly at dusk, and females lay eggs on the leaves of host plants. In the Americas, M. sexta can be found from Massachusetts to northern California, and south as far as Argentina and Chile. The M. sexta genome contains 28 chromosomes, with a genome size of ~500 MB. The genome sequence will aid current and future studies using M. sexta as a model system for research on fundamental processes in insect physiology and biochemistry.
Publication	Gershman A, Romer TG, Fan Y, Razaghi R, Smith WA, Timp W. De novo genome assembly of the tobacco hornworm moth (Manduca sexta). . G3 (Bethesda, Md.). 2021 01 18; 11(1). Kanost MR, Arrese EL, Cao X, Chen YR, Chellapilla S, Goldsmith MR, Grosse-Wilde E, Heckel DG, Herndon N, Jiang H, Papanicolaou A, Qu J, Soulages JL, Vogel H, Walters J, Waterhouse RM, Ahn SJ, Almeida FC, An C, Aqrawi P, Bretschneider A, Bryant WB, Bucks S, Chao H, Chevignon G, Christen JM, Clarke DF, Dittmer NT, Ferguson LCF, Garavelou S, Gordon KHJ, Gunaratna RT, Han Y, Hauser F, He Y, Heidel-Fischer H, Hirsh A, Hu Y, Jiang H, Kalra D, Klinner C, König C, Kovar C, Kroll AR, Kuwar SS, Lee SL, Lehman R, Li K, Li Z, Liang H, Lovelace S, Lu Z, Mansfield JH, McCulloch KJ, Mathew T, Morton B, Muzny DM, Neunemann D, Ongeri F, Pauchet Y, Pu LL, Pyrousis I, Rao XJ, Redding A, Roesel C, Sanchez-Gracia A, Schaack S, Shukla A, Tetreau G, Wang Y, Xiong GH, Traut W, Walsh TK, Worley KC, Wu D, Wu W, Wu YQ, Zhang X, Zou Z, Zucker H, Briscoe AD, Burmester T, Clem RJ, Feyereisen R, Grimmelikhuijzen CJP, Hamodrakas SJ, Hansson BS, Huguet E, Jermiin LS, Lan Q, Lehman HK, Lorenzen M, Merzendorfer H, Michalopoulos I, Morton DB, Muthukrishnan S, Oakeshott JG, Palmer W, Park Y, Passarelli AL, Rozas J, Schwartz LM, Smith W, Southgate A, Vilcinskas A, Vogt R, Wang P, Werren J, Yu XQ, Zhou JJ, Brown SJ, Scherer SE, Richards S, Blissard GW. Multifaceted biological insights from a draft genome sequence of the tobacco hornworm moth, Manduca sexta. . Insect biochemistry and molecular biology. 2016 09; 76:118-147.
Organism Image
Image Credit	Copyright Lisa Brummett.

Assembly Stats

Contig N50	40,975
GC Content	35.65
Scaffold N50	664,006

Other Information

Community Contact	Mike Kanost, Kansas State University
Links	Transcriptome Bioproject Download data

Analyses

Name	Program
Manduca sexta genome assembly JHU_Msex_v1.0 (GCF_014839805.1)	Canu v. 2.0; 3D-DNA v. 180922
Manduca sexta official gene set (OGS 2.0)	Maker 2.25, manual annotation, Trinity, Oases, PASA2
Manduca sexta Official Gene Set v2.2	Liftoff
NCBI Manduca sexta Annotation Release 102	NCBI Eukaryotic Genome Annotation Pipeline
Functional annotation of Manduca sexta Annotation Release 102	AgBase functional annotation pipeline