Background:Macrotermes natalensis belong to a single monophyletic sub-family, the Macrotermitinae. They realized a major evolutionary transition ca. 30 MYA, when they domesticated the ancestor of the extant fungal genus Termitomyces to form an obligate symbiosis.
Sampling: Macrotermes natalensis colony (Mn117) was collected from a natural population in Mookgophong , South Africa (S24°40’30.5” E28°47’50.4”, elevation 1045 m) in 2011. The DNA of a single Macrotermes natalensis queen was extracted for sequencing.
Finding: The final termite genome assembly yielded a size of 1.17Gb sequence, with a scaffold N50 of about 2Mb. 16,310 genes were annotated with the help of termite transcriptome data.

Read the peer-reviewed publication(s):

Poulsen, M., Hu, H., Li, C., Chen, Z., Xu, L., Otani, S., … Zhang, G. (2014). Complementary symbiont contributions to plant decomposition in a fungus-farming termite. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 111(40), 14500–14505. doi:10.1073/pnas.1319718111

Related datasets:

doi:10.5524/100057 IsPartOf doi:10.5524/100055
doi:10.5524/100057 IsSupplementedBy doi:10.5524/100056
doi:10.5524/100057 IsSupplementedBy doi:10.5524/100058

Accessions (data generated as part of this study):

SRA: SRP019918