Background: Ticks, hematophagous Acari, pose a significant threat by transmitting various pathogens to their vertebrate hosts during feeding. Despite advances in tick genomics, high-quality genomes were lacking until recently, particularly in the genus Ixodes, which includes the main vectors of Lyme disease.
Results: Here, we present the genome sequences of four tick species, derived from a single female individual, with a particular focus on the European species Ixodes ricinus, achieving a chromosome-level assembly.
Over the last decade, we have observed in microbial ecology a transition from gene-centric to genome-centric analyses. Indeed, the advent of metagenomics combined with binning methods, single-cell genome sequencing as well as high-throughput cultivation methods have contributed to the continuing and exponential increase of available prokaryotic genomes, which in turn has favored the exploration of microbial metabolisms. In the case of metagenomics, data processing, from raw reads to genome reconstruction, involves various steps and software which can represent a major technical obstacle.
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