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i5k Workspace@NAL
U.S. Department of Agriculture
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  2. News From The I5k Workspace@NAL - January 2026

News from the i5k Workspace@NAL - January 2026

Submitted by Poelchau Monic… on

Dear i5k Workspace@NAL community – Welcome to our first installment of our quarterly newsletter, with updates on the i5k Workspace@NAL and the i5k initiative.

Highlights:

  • Six new or updated genomes ready for community annotation
  • Major pipeline upgrade for better pathway predictions
  • Save the date: i5k Annual Meeting Feb 4, 2026
  • New i5k volunteer opportunities available

New and updated datasets

Ag100Pest genomes

Two new genomes, Diabrotica undecimpunctata (icDiaUnde3) and Anticarsia gemmatalis (ilAntGemm2), are now open for manual annotation.

Neodiprion pinetum is now updated to assembly version iyNeoPine1.2 and is open for manual annotation.

New and updated dung beetle genomes

Three genomes described in PLoS Genetics are now available: An updated assembly for Onthophagus taurus (IU_Otau_3.0), and new assemblies for Digitonthophagus gazella (IU_Dgaz_1.0) and Onthophagus sagittarius (IU_Osag_1.0). They are open for manual annotation.

Software updates

  1. We have updated our functional annotation pipeline! In our latest version, we annotate pathways via PathAnnotator, which uses KofamScan, the KEGG API, OrthoFinder, Flybase and Reactome to annotate proteins with KEGG, Flybase and Reactome Drosophila melanogaster pathways. Previously, we had used the KOBAS software for KEGG pathway annotation, and did not filter Reactome pathway annotations by species. New proteomes will be annotated with this new pipeline version moving forward.
  2. You can now find the link to a species’ JBrowse browser in its organism page under the ‘Summary’ section, in addition to the Available Genome Browsers page. See an example here: https://i5k.nal.usda.gov/organism/836529
  3. We now indicate in organism and analysis pages whether an analysis is ‘current’ or ‘suppressed’. This should make it easier for you to see which assemblies and annotations are the most up-to-date (=current), and which analyses have been superseded by newer ones (=suppressed). See an example here: https://i5k.nal.usda.gov/organism/836529

Outreach

The i5k Workspace@NAL was at PAG33! We had a presence at the AgBioData booth, and gave two talks. Dr. Kim Vertacnik presented an analysis of EGAP-x and NCBI-RefSeq annotations for the Beenome100 Project, which the i5k Workspace@NAL will host. Dr. Monica Poelchau presented an analysis of community-curated gene structures to identify major gaps in insect genome annotation.

i5k initiative news

The i5k initiative has a new date for the 2025-2026 i5k Annual Meeting: February 4th, 2026! Anyone with an interest in arthropod genomics is encouraged to join this open meeting. More details here:https://i5k.github.io/2025_annual_meeting

The i5k initiative is also recruiting volunteers for multiple roles across our working groups! More details here: https://i5k.github.io/i5k-community-roles

Contact us

Questions or comments? Reach out to us at https://i5k.nal.usda.gov/contact or i5k.ars.usda.gov.