Hélène Berges, managing director of the Plant Genomic Center at the Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique (INRA) in Toulouse, France, discusses how obtaining accurate and reliable sequence data is still challenging when targeting specific genomic regions. These issues are even more noticeable for complex plant genomes. To overcome these issues, Dr. Berges and her team have developed a strategy to reduce the genome complexity by using the large insert BAC libraries combined with next-generation sequencing technologies. She compares different technologies to sequence pools of BAC clones from several species (maize, wheat, strawberry, barley, sugarcane, and sunflower) known to be…
Judson Ward, principal scientists at Driscoll’s Strawberries in California, introduces a genome assembly for Potentilla micrantha, which is closely related to strawberry but lacks fleshy ‘fruits’ or berries. Comparative genomics between P. micrantha and strawberry will yield significant information regarding the genetic mechanisms controlling fruit development. Using SMRT Sequencing Driscoll’s sequenced the 240 Mb P. micaranthagenome and produced a draft genome assembly, spanning the majority of the predicted sequence length. A comparison of sequence data produced using the Illumina HiSeq2000 and the PacBio RS platform demonstrated that PacBio sequencing produced a significantly longer N50 contig size and permitted a more complete genome…
Alternative splicing (AS) is a key post-transcriptional regulatory mechanism, yet little information is known about its roles in fruit crops. Here, AS was globally analyzed in the wild strawberry Fragaria vesca genome with RNA-seq data derived from different stages of fruit development. The AS landscape was characterized and compared between the single-molecule, real-time (SMRT) and Illumina RNA-seq platform. While SMRT has a lower sequencing depth, it identifies more genes undergoing AS (57.67% of detected multiexon genes) when it is compared with Illumina (33.48%), illustrating the efficacy of SMRT in AS identification. We investigated different modes of AS in the context…
The genome of the wild diploid strawberry species Fragaria vesca, an ideal model system of cultivated strawberry (Fragaria × ananassa, octoploid) and other Rosaceae family crops, was first published in 2011 and followed by a new assembly (Fvb). However, the annotation for Fvb mainly relied on ab initio predictions and included only predicted coding sequences, therefore an improved annotation is highly desirable. Here, a new annotation version named v2.0.a2 was created for the Fvb genome by a pipeline utilizing one PacBio library, 90 Illumina RNA-seq libraries, and 9 small RNA-seq libraries. Altogether, 18,641 genes (55.6% out of 33,538 genes) were…
Verticillium dahliae infection of strawberry (Fragaria x ananassa) is a major cause of disease-induced wilting in soil-grown strawberries across the world. To understand what components of the pathogen are affecting disease expression, the presence of the known effector VdAve1 was screened in a sample of Verticillium dahliae isolates. Isolates from strawberry were found to contain VdAve1 and were divided into two major clades, based upon their vegetative compatibility groups (VCG); no UK strawberry isolates contained VdAve1. VC clade was strongly related to their virulence levels. VdAve1-containing isolates pathogenic on strawberry were found in both clades, in contrast to some recently…
NAC proteins are a family of transcription factors which have a variety of important regulatory roles in plants. They present a very well conserved group of NAC subdomains in the N-terminal region and a highly variable domain at the C-terminus. Currently, knowledge concerning NAC family in the strawberry plant remains very limited. In this work, we analyzed the NAC family of Fragaria vesca, and a total of 112 NAC proteins were identified after we curated the annotations from the version 4.0.a1 genome. They were placed into the ligation groups (pseudo-chromosomes) and described its physicochemical and genetic features. A microarray transcriptomic…
Background: Numerous completed or on-going whole genome sequencing projects have highlighted the fact that obtaining a high quality genome sequence is necessary to address comparative genomics questions such as structural variations among genotypes and gain or loss of specific function. Despite the spectacular progress that has been made in sequencing technologies, obtaining accurate and reliable data is still a challenge, both at the whole genome scale and when targeting specific genomic regions. These problems are even more noticeable for complex plant genomes. Most plant genomes are known to be particularly challenging due to their size, high density of repetitive elements…
Although draft genomes are available for most agronomically important plant species, the majority are incomplete, highly fragmented, and often riddled with assembly and scaffolding errors. These assembly issues hinder advances in tool development for functional genomics and systems biology.Here we utilized a robust, cost-effective approach to produce high-quality reference genomes. We report a near-complete genome of diploid woodland strawberry (Fragaria vesca) using single-molecule real-time sequencing from Pacific Biosciences (PacBio). This assembly has a contig N50 length of ~7.9 million base pairs (Mb), representing a ~300-fold improvement of the previous version. The vast majority (>99.8%) of the assembly was anchored to…
Xanthomonas fragariae is a worldwide-spread plant bacterial disease causing angular leaf spots, thus reducing the yield of production for strawberry fruits. Three isolates with various geographic and time origins were sequenced with long-read technology (PacBio) to generate finished genome sequences of virulent strains and observe the variability in their contents. Copyright © 2017 Gétaz et al.
Pseudomonas brassicacearum LBUM300, a plant rhizosphere-inhabiting bacterium, produces 2,4-diacetylphloroglucinol and hydrogen cyanide and has shown antagonistic activity against the plant pathogens Verticillium dahliae, Phytophthora cactorum, and Clavibacter michiganensis subsp. michiganensis. Here, we report the complete genome sequence of P. brassicacearum LBUM300. Copyright © 2016 Novinscak et al.
Xanthomonas fragariae is a foliar pathogen of strawberry that is of significant concern to nursery production of strawberry transplants and field production of strawberry fruit. Long-read sequencing was employed to generate finished genomes for two isolates (each with one chromosome and two plasmids) from symptomatic plants in northern California. Copyright © 2016 Henry and Leveau.