Data from: The testes transcriptome of the New World Screwworm, Cochliomyia hominivorax

The New World Screwworm (NWS), Cochliomyia hominivorax, is a pest insect that is endemic to subtropical and tropical regions of the Western Hemisphere. The female lays eggs in open wounds or orifices of warm-blooded animals. Upon hatching, the resulting larvae feed upon the host's living tissues, which can become infected and death can occur. The sterile insect technique was developed to eradicate this pest from North America and new female conditional-lethal strains that generate only male individuals are being developed for use in the eradication program. To facilitate the identification of useful transcripts and gene promoters for these new strains, an Illumina Hi-Seq protocol was used to sequence the testes transcriptome of NWS. This study reports the assembly of 4149 transcripts (≥200 nt) from testes dissected from NWS males obtained from the J06 strain used in the screwworm production plant in Pacora, Panama. Functional annotation resulted in 2060, 2031, 558, and 325 transcripts with assigned BlastX, Gene Ontology, Enzyme Codes, and KEGG pathway information, respectively. In the Gene Ontology annotations, 6% and 3% of the transcripts in the Biological Process Ontology were noted as Developmental Process and Reproduction, respectively. Supplementary data includes FastA sequences of the final assembled dataset contigs and a table of Functional annotation information for the NWS testes transcripts. This dataset will serve as a resource to facilitate studies of sex determination in the NWS and the development of recombinant vectors that can be used to create new male-only strains of NWS.

• Resource Title: The testes transcriptome of the New World Screwworm, Cochliomyia hominivorax.

  File Name: Web Page, url: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352340916306862

  Data in Brief article reporting the assembly of 4149 transcripts (≥200 nt) from testes dissected from New World Screwworm, Cochliomyia hominivoraxmales males obtained from the J06 strain used in the screwworm production plant in Pacora, Panama.