Ha, thank you! You might also be interested to know that these patterns are correlated with function too.

We’re particularly excited this as a framework for connecting micro- to macro-evolution in this group. One early look at a fascinating result: a 2400 residue protein where polymorphism across ~30spp matches substitutions (neutral evolution) across ~30 million years. More soon!

We have more coming in the near future, including a comprehensive Drosophilidae Tree of Life integrating whole-genome data (pictured phylogeny) with classic markers (not shown), RNA-seq for annotation, and population genomic data for >100 species.

This approach also worked surprisingly well for ethanol-preserved specimens, opening up older collections to genomic study and helping us add many esoteric taxa to the tree.

We’ve done lots of fresh collections of wild flies over the last couple years: across the Hawaiian Islands, the Western US (CA, OR, WA, MT, ID, CO), the Midwest (MI, OH), Europe (UK) and were able to assemble single-fly genomes for every species we collected.

The genomes are obviously more fragmented but surprisingly high quality in many/most cases: >1Mb N50, >QV40, 98-99% BUSCO, etc. Our benchmarking with D. mel suggests minimal benefit from Illumina polishing, but we do it sequence because it’s so cheap and convenient assembly QC.

One of the most underrated aspects of R10.4.1 chemistry is the 10-fold increase in sensitivity which has allowed us to prep libraries (5-10 kbp N50) with as little as 30 ng gDNA as input (e.g. the pictured sample)! I’m also sure we could go lower.