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Updated: Sep 21, 2025

Extraction of Venom and Venom Gland Microdissections from Spiders for Proteomic and Transcriptomic Analyses
Published on: November 3, 2014
Chromosome-level genome assembly of the black widow spider Latrodectus elegans illuminates composition and evolution
Zhongkai Wang1,2, Kesen Zhu1, Haorong Li2
1Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Insect Developmental Biology and Applied Technology, Institute of Insect Science and Technology, School of Life Sciences, South China Normal University, Guangzhou, 510631, PR China.
Background:
The black widow spider has both extraordinarily neurotoxic venom and three-dimensional cobwebs composed of diverse types of silk. However, a high-quality reference genome for the black widow spider was still unavailable, which hindered deep understanding and application of the valuable biomass.
Findings:
We assembled the Latrodectus elegans genome, including a genome size of 1.57 Gb with contig N50 of 4.34 Mb and scaffold N50 of 114.31 Mb. Hi-C scaffolding assigned 98.08% of the genome to 14 pseudo-chromosomes, and with BUSCO, completeness analysis revealed that 98.4% of the core eukaryotic genes were completely present in this genome. Annotation of this genome identified that repetitive sequences account for 506.09 Mb (32.30%) and 20,167 protein-coding genes, and specifically, we identified 55 toxin genes and 26 spidroins and provide preliminary analysis of their composition and evolution.
Conclusions:
We present the first chromosome-level genome assembly of a black widow spider and provide substantial toxin and spidroin gene resources. These high-qualified genomic data add valuable resources from a representative spider group and contribute to deep exploration of spider genome evolution, especially in terms of the important issues on the diversification of venom and web-weaving pattern. The sequence data are also firsthand templates for further application of the spider biomass.
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