30ng of DNA is all you need to get the whole genome sequencing of a single mosquito

 

This is an Anopheles mosquito that has recently fed on blood. This individual was photographed as it was resting on some clothing hanging in a village hut in rural Mali, west Africa (photograph by Dr. Michelle Sanford).

The abdomen contains undigested blood which we can use to identify what species of mammal the blood came from (using a PCR assay or better yet an iPLEX multi-detection assay). The head and thorax is used for extracting the DNA used for whole genome sequencing. 

We uses a half-volume protocol (developed by Dr. Bradley Main), a modified version of the Illumina Nextera library prep protocol to sequence the entire 273 million base pair genome with 30ng DNA from a single mosquito.