Genome-wide identification of accessible chromatin regions in bumblebee (Bombus terrestris) by ATAC-seq

Abstract

Bumblebees (Hymenoptera: Apidae) are important pollinating insects that play pivotal roles in crop production and natural ecosystem services. To date, while the protein-coding sequences of bumblebees have been extensively annotated, regulatory elements, such as promoters and enhancers, have been poorly annotated in the bumblebee genome. To achieve a comprehensive profile of accessible chromatin regions and provide clues for all possible regulatory elements in the bumblebee genome, we did ATAC-seq (Assay for Transposase-Accessible Chromatin with high-throughput sequencing) for B. terrestris samples derived from its four developmental stages: egg, larva, pupa, and adult, respectively. The sequencing reads of ATAC-seq were mapped to B. terrestris reference genome, and the accessible chromatin regions of bumblebee were identified and characterized by using bioinformatic methods. Our study will provide important resources not only for uncovering regulatory elements in the bumblebee genome, but also for expanding our understanding of bumblebee biology. The ATAC-seq data generated in this study has been deposited in NCBI GEO (accession#: GSE131063).