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BackgroundHeterodera glycines, commonly referred to as the soybean cyst nematode (SCN), is an obligatory and sedentary plant parasite that causes over a billion-dollar yield loss to soybean production annually. Although there are genetic determinants that render soybean plants resistant to certain nematode genotypes, resistant soybean cultivars are increasingly ineffective because their multi-year usage has selected for virulent H. glycines populations. The parasitic success of H. glycines relies on the comprehensive re-engineering of an infection site into a syncytium, as well as the long-term suppression of host defense to ensure syncytial viability. At the forefront of these complex molecular interactions are effectors, the proteins secreted by H. glycines into host root tissues. The mechanisms of effector acquisition, diversification, and selection need to be understood before effective control strategies can be developed, but the lack of an annotated genome has been a major roadblock.ResultsHere, we use PacBio long-read technology to assemble a H. glycines genome of 738 contigs into 123 Mb with annotations for 29,769 genes. The genome contains significant numbers of repeats (34%), tandem duplicates (18.7 Mb), and horizontal gene transfer events (151 genes). A large number of putative effectors (431 genes) were identified in the genome, many of which were found in transposons.ConclusionsThis advance provides a glimpse into the host and parasite interplay by revealing a diversity of mechanisms that give rise to virulence genes in the soybean cyst nematode, including: tandem duplications containing over a fifth of the total gene count, virulence genes hitchhiking in transposons, and 107 horizontal gene transfers not reported in other plant parasitic nematodes thus far. Through extensive characterization of the H. glycines genome, we provide new insights into H. glycines biology and shed light onto the mystery underlying complex host-parasite interactions. This genome sequence is an important prerequisite to enable work towards generating new resistance or control measures against H. glycines.

This article describes a genome assembly and annotation for Bombus dahlbomii , the giant Patagonian bumble bee. DNA from a single, haploid male collected in Argentina was used for PacBio (HiFi) sequencing, and Hi-C technology was then used to map chromatin contacts. Using Juicer and manual curation, the genome was scaffolded into 18 main pseudomolecules, representing a high-quality, near chromosome-level assembly. The sequenced genome size is estimated at 265 Mb. The genome was annotated based on RNA sequencing data of another male from Argentina, and BRAKER3 produced 15,767 annotated genes. The genome and annotation show high completeness, with >95% BUSCO scores for both the genome and annotated genes (based on conserved genes from Hymenoptera). This genome provides a valuable resource for studying the biology of this iconic and endangered species, as well as for understanding the impacts of its decline and designing strategies for its preservation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction The uniqueness of living organisms is dependent not only upon the suite of genic material available to them but also upon the subtleties of gene expression patterns. Some genes [...], Studies have indicated that exon and intron size and intergenic distance are correlated with gene expression levels and expression breadth. Previous reports on these correlations in plants and animals have been conflicting. In this study, next-generation sequence data, which has been shown to be more sensitive than previous expression profiling technologies, were generated and analyzed from 14 tissues. Our results revealed a novel dichotomy. At the low expression level, an increase in expression breadth correlated with an increase in transcript size because of an increase in the number of exons and introns. No significant changes in intron or exon sizes were noted. Conversely, genes expressed at the intermediate to high expression levels displayed a decrease in transcript size as their expression breadth increased. This was due to smaller exons, with no significant change in the number of exons. Taking advantage of the known gene space of soybean, we evaluated the positioning of genes and found significant clustering of similarly expressed genes. Identifying the correlations between the physical parameters of individual genes could lead to uncovering the role of regulation owing to nucleotide composition, which might have potential impacts in discerning the role of the noncoding regions. Key words: expression level, expression breadth, next-generation sequencing, physical clustering. Des etudes ont montre que la taille des introns et des exons ainsi que la distance intergeenique seraient corretees avec le niveau et l'etendue de l'expression geenique. Les etudes anteerieures sur ce sujet chez les plantes et les animaux se sont averees contradictoires. Dans cette etude, des domtoes de sequence de seconde generation, lesquelles fournissent des donnees transcriptomiques plus sensibles que celles obtenues a l'aide des techniques anteerieures, ont ete produites et analysees chez 14 tissus. Les resultats des auteurs revelent une nouvelle dichotomie. Chez les genes faiblement exprimes, un accroissement de l'etendue de l'expression etait correle avec un accroissement de la taille des transcrits attribuable a une augmentation du nombre d'exons et d'introns. Aucun changement quant a la taille des introns ou des exons n'a ete note;. Inversement, les genes exprimes de maniere intermeidiaire ou forte presentaient des transcrits dont la taille diminuait au fur et a mesure que s'accroissait l'etendue de leur expression. Cette reduction etait due a une reduction de la taille des exons, sans qu'il y ait eu reduction du nombre de ceux-ci. En tirant avantage de la connaissance de l'espace geenique chez le soya, les auteurs ont examine; le positionnement des genes et ont observe un groupement significatif des genes qui presentent un niveau d'expression semblable. L'identification de correlations entre les parameitres physiques de genes individuels pourrait permettre de mieux comprendre la re;gulation ge;nique de;coulant de la composition nucle;otidique, laquelle pourrait aider a discerner le role des regions non-codantes. Mots-cles: niveau d'expression, eetendue de l'expression, seequencage de seconde generation, groupement physique. [Traduit par la Redaction]

Abstract Background Next generation sequencing is transforming our understanding of transcriptomes. It can determine the expression level of transcripts with a dynamic range of over six orders of magnitude from multiple tissues, developmental stages or conditions. Patterns of gene expression provide insight into functions of genes with unknown annotation. Results The RNA Seq-Atlas presented here provides a record of high-resolution gene expression in a set of fourteen diverse tissues. Hierarchical clustering of transcriptional profiles for these tissues suggests three clades with similar profiles: aerial, underground and seed tissues. We also investigate the relationship between gene structure and gene expression and find a correlation between gene length and expression. Additionally, we find dramatic tissue-specific gene expression of both the most highly-expressed genes and the genes specific to legumes in seed development and nodule tissues. Analysis of the gene expression profiles of over 2,000 genes with preferential gene expression in seed suggests there are more than 177 genes with functional roles that are involved in the economically important seed filling process. Finally, the Seq-atlas also provides a means of evaluating existing gene model annotations for the Glycine max genome. Conclusions This RNA-Seq atlas extends the analyses of previous gene expression atlases performed using Affymetrix GeneChip technology and provides an example of new methods to accommodate the increase in transcriptome data obtained from next generation sequencing. Data contained within this RNA-Seq atlas of Glycine max can be explored at http://www.soybase.org/soyseq.

Abalone are one of the few marine taxa where aquaculture production dominates the global market as a result of increasing demand and declining natural stocks from overexploitation and disease. To better understand abalone biology, aid in conservation efforts for endangered abalone species, and gain insight into sustainable aquaculture, we created a draft genome of the red abalone (Haliotis rufescens). The approach to this genome draft included initial assembly using raw Illumina and PacBio sequencing data with MaSuRCA, before scaffolding using sequencing data generated from Chicago library preparations with HiRise2. This assembly approach resulted in 8,371 scaffolds and total length of 1.498 Gb; the N50 was 1.895 Mb, and the longest scaffold was 13.2 Mb. Gene models were predicted, using MAKER2, from RNA-Seq data and all related expressed sequence tags and proteins from NCBI; this resulted in 57,785 genes with an average length of 8,255 bp. In addition, single nucleotide polymorphisms were called on Illumina short-sequencing reads from five other eastern Pacific abalone species: the green (H. fulgens), pink (H. corrugata), pinto (H. kamtschatkana), black (H. cracherodii), and white (H. sorenseni) abalone. Phylogenetic relationships largely follow patterns detected by previous studies based on 1,784,991 high-quality single nucleotide polymorphisms. Among the six abalone species examined, the endangered white abalone appears to harbor the lowest levels of heterozygosity. This draft genome assembly and the sequencing data provide a foundation for genome-enabled aquaculture improvement for red abalone, and for genome-guided conservation efforts for the other five species and, in particular, for the endangered white and black abalone. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]