title: Western corn rootworm (Diabrotica virgifera virgifera) transcriptome assembly and genomic analysis of population structure.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Western corn rootworm (WCR) is one of the most significant insect pests of maize in North America. WCR has dramatically increased its range in the last century, invading key maize production areas in the US and abroad. In addition, this species has a history of evolving traits that allow it to escape various control options. Improved genetic and genomic resources are crucial tools for understanding population history and the genetic basis of trait evolution. Here we produce and analyze a transcriptome assembly for WCR. We also perform whole genome population resequencing, and combine these resources to better understand the evolutionary history of WCR.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The WCR transcriptome assembly presented here contains approximately 16,000 unigenes, many of which have high similarity to other insect species. Among these unigenes we found several gene families that have been implicated in insecticide resistance in other species. We also identified over 500,000 unigene based SNPs among 26 WCR populations. We used these SNPs to scan for outliers among the candidate genes, and to understand how population processes have shaped genetic variation in this species.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  This study highlights the utility of transcriptomic and genomic resources as foundational tools for dealing with highly adaptive pest species. Using these tools we identified candidate gene families for insecticide resistance and reveal aspects of WCR population history in light of the species' recent range expansion.
authors.forename: Lex E
authors.initials: LE
authors.lastname: Flagel
authors.forename: Raman
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Bansal
authors.forename: Randall A
authors.initials: RA
authors.lastname: Kerstetter
authors.forename: Mao
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.forename: Matthew
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Carroll
authors.forename: Ronald
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Flannagan
authors.forename: Thomas
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Clark
authors.affiliation: Monsanto Company, 700 Chesterfield Parkway W, Chesterfield, MO 63017, USA. barry.s.goldman@monsanto.com.
authors.forename: Barry S
authors.initials: BS
authors.lastname: Goldman
authors.forename: Andy P
authors.initials: AP
authors.lastname: Michel
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001517:Coleoptera / Q000235:genetics*; D019295:Computational Biology / Q000379:methods; D005828:Genetics, Population; D023281:Genomics; D005838:Genotype; D058977:Molecular Sequence Annotation; D020641:Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D059467:Transcriptome