# Chromosome-scale genome assembly and annotation of the two-spotted cricket Gryllus bimaculatus (Orthoptera: Gryllidae)

## TL;DR

Researchers created a high-quality, chromosome-scale genome assembly for the two-spotted cricket, improving its usefulness for biology and neuroscience studies.

## Contribution

A chromosome-scale genome assembly and improved gene annotation for Gryllus bimaculatus, with significantly higher completeness and contiguity.

## Key findings

- The new genome assembly has a scaffold N50 of 107.4 Mbp, a major improvement over the previous 6.3 Mbp.
- 94.45% of the assembly was anchored into 15 pseudomolecules matching the known karyotype.
- The updated gene annotation identified 14,964 protein-coding genes with 95.7% completeness using BUSCO.

## Abstract

The two-spotted cricket, Gryllus bimaculatus, is a key hemimetabolous model organism for developmental biology, neuroscience, and regeneration. The existing reference genome is, however, highly fragmented into 47,877 scaffolds, hampering chromosome-scale analyses for these fields. Here, we report a high-quality, chromosome-scale genome assembly for the white-eyed mutant strain of this cricket, generated using a combination of Nanopore and PacBio HiFi long reads, integrated with Hi-C data. The final 1.62-Gbp assembly achieves a scaffold N50 of 107.4 Mbp, a significant improvement in contiguity over the previous 6.3-Mbp N50. We anchored 94.45% of the assembly into 15 pseudomolecules, consistent with the known karyotype (n = 15). The genome completeness (BUSCO v6.0.0 insecta_odb12) reached 98.1%. We also updated the annotation, identifying 14,964 protein-coding genes. This gene set shows markedly improved completeness (BUSCO v6.0.0 insecta_odb12: 95.7%) compared with the previous annotation (81.2%) and successfully recovers all 9 essential neuropeptide genes previously reported as missing from the draft assembly. This chromosome-scale genomic resource provides an essential foundation for comparative and functional genomics in G. bimaculatus.