Silkworm is an important economic insect and an emerging model organism. On October 9, Southwest University released the latest scientific research results: the team of the State Key Laboratory of Genome Biology of Silkworm completed the genome analysis of large-scale germplasm resources of silkworm, and painted silkworm super pan for the first time in the world. Genome map, and took the lead in creating a "digital silkworm" gene bank, pushing the genetic research of Chinese silkworm to the stage of design breeding.

For the study of silkworm genes, there was only a single reference genome and partial resequencing data before, which was not enough to support the deep mining of genome variation and excellent genes, especially for molecular breeding, which had significant limitations. The super pan-genome map of this breakthrough is the sum of all the genomic information of a species, which is of great significance for deepening functional genome research and germplasm innovation.

According to Tong Xiaoling, a professor and doctoral supervisor of the State Key Laboratory of Silkworm Genome Biology at Southwest University, in order to comprehensively reflect all the genome information of silkworms, the team collected 1,078 different materials, including those distributed in various geographic regions of China. Wild silkworm resources, geographical species, and practical species, as well as the largest resource library of silkworm mutation resources, with more than 600 mutation resources in the library, this is the largest sample collection in the three-generation pan-genome that can be done so far. , so it can represent the genome information of all taxa of the whole silkworm.

It is understood that with the genome map, scientists have a complete reference book, and will design the breeding of silkworms according to their needs in the future.

Xiang Zhonghuai, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, pointed out that in the last century, the rise of genetics and the discovery of genetics made breakthroughs in my country's silk industry, which promoted the development of our entire silk industry. It will form a new 100-year revitalization of the silk industry, as the starting point for our scientific and technological support to revitalize the silk industry.