PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Armisén, David
AU  - Rajakumar, Rajendhran
AU  - Friedrich, Markus
AU  - Benoit, Joshua B
AU  - Robertson, Hugh M.
AU  - Panfilio, Kristen A.
AU  - Ahn, Seung-Joon
AU  - Poelchau, Monica F.
AU  - Chao, Hsu
AU  - Dinh, Huyen
AU  - Doddapaneni, HarshaVardhan
AU  - Dugan, Shannon
AU  - Gibbs, Richard A.
AU  - Hughes, Daniel S.T.
AU  - Han, Yi
AU  - Lee, Sandra L.
AU  - Murali, Shwetha C.
AU  - Muzny, Donna M.
AU  - Qu, Jiaxin
AU  - Worley, Kim C.
AU  - Munoz-Torres, Monica
AU  - Abouheif, Ehab
AU  - Bonneton, François
AU  - Chen, Travis
AU  - Chiang, Li-Mei
AU  - Childers, Christopher P.
AU  - Cridge, Andrew Graham
AU  - Crumière, Antonin Jean Johan
AU  - Decaras, Amelie
AU  - Didion, Elise M.
AU  - Duncan, Elizabeth
AU  - Elpidina, Elena N.
AU  - Favé, Marie-Julie
AU  - Finet, Cédric
AU  - Jacobs, Chris G.C.
AU  - Jarvela, Alys
AU  - Jennings, Emily J.
AU  - Jones, Jeffery W.
AU  - Lesoway, Maryna P.
AU  - Lovegrove, Mackenzie
AU  - Martynov, Alexander
AU  - Oppert, Brenda
AU  - Lillico-Ouachour, Angelica
AU  - Rajakumar, Arjuna
AU  - Refki, Peter Nagui
AU  - Rosendale, Andrew J.
AU  - Santos, Maria Emilia
AU  - Toubiana, William
AU  - van der Zee, Maurijn
AU  - Vargas Jentzsch, Iris M.
AU  - Lowman, Aidamalia Vargas
AU  - Viala, Severine
AU  - Richards, Stephen
AU  - Khila, Abderrahman
TI  - The genome of the water strider <em>Gerris buenoi</em> reveals expansions of gene repertoires associated with adaptations to life on the water
AID  - 10.1101/242230
DP  - 2018 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 242230
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2018/02/11/242230.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2018/02/11/242230.full
AB  - The semi-aquatic bugs conquered water surfaces worldwide and occupy ponds, streams, lakes, mangroves, and even open oceans. As such, they inspired a range of scientific studies from ecology and evolution to developmental genetics and hydrodynamics of fluid locomotion. However, the lack of a representative water strider genome hinders thorough investigations of the mechanisms underlying the processes of adaptation and diversification in this group. Here we report the sequencing and manual annotation of the Gerris buenoi (G. buenoi) genome, the first water strider genome to be sequenced so far. G. buenoi genome is about 1 000Mb and the sequencing effort recovered 20 949 predicted protein-coding genes. Manual annotation uncovered a number of local (tandem and proximal) gene duplications and expansions of gene families known for their importance in a variety of processes associated with morphological and physiological adaptations to water surface lifestyle. These expansions affect key processes such as growth, vision, desiccation resistance, detoxification, olfaction and epigenetic components. Strikingly, the G. buenoi genome contains three Insulin Receptors, a unique case among metazoans, suggesting key changes in the rewiring and function of the insulin pathway. Other genomic changes include wavelength sensitivity shifts in opsin proteins likely in association with the requirements of vision in water habitats. Our findings suggest that local gene duplications might have had an important role during the evolution of water striders. These findings along with the G. buenoi genome open exciting research opportunities to understand adaptation and genome evolution of this unique hemimetabolous insect.