High-Quality PacBio Sequencing of Ant Genome

For both PacBio and Illumina DNA sequencing, all steps were carried out by Novogene (Hong Kong) as part of the Global Ant Genomics Alliance (GAGA, Boomsma et al. 2017 ). DNA from a single haploid male was extracted using a Sodium Dodecyl Sulfate (SDS) protocol following Pippel et al. (2020) (link) and a SMRTbell library was prepared using the SMRT bell Template Prep Kit 1.0-SPv3 (Pacbio, 100-991-900). DNA quantification was performed using a Qubit fluorometer (Thermo Fisher) and purity was assessed with an agarose gel electrophoresis. The extraction from a single male yielded 9.89 μg of DNA, at a concentration of 86 ng/μL (A_260/280 = 1.76, A_260/230 = 1.20). DNA fragmentation was assessed through an Advanced Analytical Fragment Analyzer (AATI, mean size: 18 317 bp) prior to size selection (BluePippin, Sage Sciences, cutoff: 10 kb). The sample was loaded onto 4 SMRT cells with the Sequel Sequencing Kit 2.0 following PacBio recommendations and sequenced on a PacBio Sequel platform.