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Chromosome-scale assemblies of plant genomes using nanopore long reads and optical maps

Abstract

Plant genomes are often characterized by a high level of repetitiveness and polyploid nature. Consequently, creating genome assemblies for plant genomes is challenging. The introduction of short-read technologies 10 years ago substantially increased the number of available plant genomes. Generally, these assemblies are incomplete and fragmented, and only a few are at the chromosome scale. Recently, Pacific Biosciences and Oxford Nanopore sequencing technologies were commercialized that can sequence long DNA fragments (kilobases to megabase) and, using efficient algorithms, provide high-quality assemblies in terms of contiguity and completeness of repetitive regions1,2,3,4. However, even though genome assemblies based on long reads exhibit high contig N50s (>1 Mb), these methods are still insufficient to decipher genome organization at the chromosome level. Here, we describe a strategy based on long reads (MinION or PromethION sequencers) and optical maps (Saphyr system) that can produce chromosome-level assemblies and demonstrate applicability by generating high-quality genome sequences for two new dicotyledon morphotypes, Brassica rapa Z1 (yellow sarson) and Brassica oleracea HDEM (broccoli), and one new monocotyledon, Musa schizocarpa (banana). All three assemblies show contig N50s of >5 Mb and contain scaffolds that represent entire chromosomes or chromosome arms.

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Fig. 1: Comparison of contig N50 and genome sizes of 105 existing plant genome assemblies.
Fig. 2: Circular representation of anchored scaffolds of B.oleracea HDEM, B.rapa Z1 and M.schizocarpa genome assemblies.
Fig. 3: Base annotation of the three ONT genomes and the corresponding current references (B.rapa, B.oleracea and Musa species).

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Data availability

The genome assemblies, gene predictions and genome browsers are freely available at http://www.genoscope.cns.fr/plants. The Illumina, MinION and PromethION data, the assemblies and the annotations are available in the European Nucleotide Archive under the following projects: PRJEB26620 (B.rapa), PRJEB26621 (B.oleracea) and PRJEB26661 (M.schizocarpa). Germplasm for these genomes will be made freely and publicly available to the entire community. M.schizocarpa germplasm is available at Bioversity International Transit Center under ITC number ITC0926. B.rapa ssp. trilocularis (genotype Z1) is available at the Plant Genetic Resources of Canada and B.oleracea ssp. italica (genotype HDEM) is available at the Biological Resource Center BrACySol, Rennes, France. All supporting data are included in the Supplementary Information.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Genoscope, the Commissariat à l’Energie Atomique et aux Energies Alternatives (CEA) and France Génomique (ANR-10-INBS-09-08). We are grateful to ONT for early access to the MinION device through the MinION Access Programme and we thank their staff for technical help. Work by X.V. and M.G. is supported financially by Région Hauts-de-France, the Ministère de l’Enseignement Supérieur et de la Recherche (CPER Climibio) and the European Fund for Regional Economic Development.

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Authors

Contributions

C.F., G.D., F.-C.B., E.D. and C.C. extracted the DNA. C.C. and A.L. optimized and performed the sequencing. E.D., W.B. and V.B. generated the optical maps. P.D., R.D. and M.M.-D. generated the genetic map for the B.oleracea HDEM accession. B.I., C.B. and J.-M.A. performed the genome assemblies. G.M. performed the anchoring of the M.schizocarpa scaffolds. C.F., J.M. and M.R.-G. performed the anchoring of the B.oleracea scaffolds. M.D. and J.-M.A. performed the anchoring of the B.rapa scaffolds. M.D. and B.N. performed the gene prediction for the genome assemblies. B.I., C.B., M.D., F.D., J.-M.A. and S.E. performed the bioinformatic analyses. X.V. and M.G. performed the S-locus annotation of the two Brassicaceae genomes. B.I., C.B., M.D. and J.-M.A. wrote the article. A.D., A.-M.C., P.W. and J.-M.A. supervised the study.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jean-Marc Aury.

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The authors declare no competing interests. B.I., S.E., C.C., P.W. and J.-M.A. are part of the MinION Access Programme and J.-M.A. received travel and accommodation expenses to speak at ONT conferences.

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Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary Tables 1–21 and Supplementary Figures 1–19.

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Supplementary File 2

Detailed information about the 105 plant genome assemblies.

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Belser, C., Istace, B., Denis, E. et al. Chromosome-scale assemblies of plant genomes using nanopore long reads and optical maps. Nature Plants 4, 879–887 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41477-018-0289-4

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