Diversity and evolution of caddisfly silk genes

Sunday, November 13, 2022

2:54 PM – 3:06 PM PT

Location: Vancouver Convention Centre, Meeting Room 215/216

Presenting Author(s)

Paul B. Frandsen

Assistant Professor
Brigham Young University
Provo, Utah

Co-Author(s)

JH

Jacqueline Heckenhauer

LOEWE Centre for Translational Biodiversity Genomics
Frankfurt am Main, Hessen, Germany
SP

Steffen Pauls

Senckenberg Research Institute and Natural History Museum
Frankfurt am Main, Hessen, Germany
RS

Russell J. Stewart

University of Utah
Salt Lake City, Utah

Caddisfly silk consists primarily of two fibrous proteins—the heavy-chain fibroin (H-fibroin) and the light-chain fibroin (L-fibroin). Deciphering the structure of the H-fibroin gene is thought to be essential to linking genotype and phenotype in caddisfly silk. Until recently, H-fibroins have been nearly impossible to sequence and assemble due to a highly repetitive internal region. Here we report on new full-length sequences of H-fibroin genes derived from high-quality long read data (PacBio HiFi). We sample species spanning the breadth of the caddisfly radiation and across a diversity of silk uses. We compare the structure of the genes and share hypotheses into the maintenance and diversification of the variation we observe across this order of underwater architects.