The Scolopendra subspinipes mutilans Genome Sequencing Unravels Human Beneficial Peptides

The Chinese red-headed centipede, Scolopendra subspinipes mutilans, is considered as a traditional medicine and has rich source of broad spectrum anti-microbial peptides that can be developed into drugs with therapeutic potential for various diseases in human. However, the genomic resource of this centipede is largely unexplored and hindered the availability of novel drugs. Also, characterization of genes in the Scolopendra genome will advance our understanding of its biology and provide new avenues for its therapeutic value. Here, we report a genome sequence of Scolopendra which is estimated as 1.2 GB in size. Totally 292 GB (~236x depth coverage) bases were assembled into 924 MB and the quality of de novo assembly resulted with a contig N50 of 84.5 KB and scaffold N50 of 37 KB, including 24% of genome repeats. In house, consensus gene prediction pipeline resulted with 26,774 protein-coding genes with 91.5% CEGMA output confirmed the completeness of the genome. Functional annotation showed 16% of genes were homologs with myriapod, Strigamia maritimawhich genome sequence published recently. From these genes, 15 antimicrobial peptides were predicted by computational methods and experimentally confirmed. Further prediction of microsatellites and novel AMPs is currently in progress. Besides, the Chinese red-headed centipede genome will serve as a significant reference for comparative genomic studies across the myriapods.

Keywords: Scolopendra subspinipes mutilans, Centipede, Full Length Genome, Antimicrobial peptides