Most Accurate and Complete Wheat Genome to Date Has Been Released

The most accurate and complete DNA analyses of the wheat genome to date has been reported in the journal Genome Research by a group of scientists at the John Innes Centre (JIC), in collaboration with colleagues at the Earlham Institute, The Sainsbury Laboratory, and the European Bioinformatics Institute.

The scientists have generated a new wheat whole-genome shotgun sequence assembly using a combination of optimized data types and an assembly algorithm designed to deal with large and complex genomes. The new assembly represents >78% of the genome with a scaffold N50 of 88.8 kb that has a high fidelity to the input data.

The team identified 104,091 high-confidence protein-coding genes and 10,156 noncoding RNA genes, and confirmed three known and identified one novel genome rearrangements. Their approach enables rapid and scalable assembly of wheat genomes, identification of structural variants, and definition of complete gene models, all powerful resources for trait analysis and breeding of this key global crop.

For more details, read the article at the JIC website, or read the open access article at Genome Research.