Orthologous genes of the red flour beetle Tribolium castaneum and the vinegar fly Drosophila melanogaster

TL;DR

This paper provides a list of shared genes between two insect species, aiding comparative genomic studies.

Contribution

A comprehensive list of over 9,000 orthologous genes between Tribolium and Drosophila is generated and made publicly accessible.

Findings

Over 9,000 orthologous genes were identified between Tribolium castaneum and Drosophila melanogaster.

The results are available for free download and interactive exploration in iBeetleBase.

The ortholog list is intended to support comparative genomic and gene function studies.

Abstract

Tribolium castaneum and Drosophila melanogaster are prominent insect model organisms for investigating developmental and evolutionary processes. Both have a significant kit of genetic and molecular tools and a substantial quantity of omic data at their disposal, which makes this species pair suitable for comparative genomic and gene function studies. However, for such comparisons, a rigorous assignment and compilation of the orthologs that these organisms share are essential. Here, we generated and provided a list of orthologous genes between Drosophila and Tribolium, which will be useful for future comparative genomic studies.

We made use of the reference proteomes of Tribolium castaneum and Drosophila melanogaster to infer phylogenetic orthology using the OrthoFinder platform, and employed the eggNOG 6.0 database and manual phylogenetic tree analyses to assess our results. Our analysis identified more than 9,000 orthologous genes between Drosophila and Tribolium. We posit that this comprehensive list is a valuable resource for comparative studies among these insect species, such as single-cell sequencing or large-scale gene function comparisons. The results are open-access and freely available for download or interactive exploration in iBeetleBase.

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12863-025-01397-0.