Biotech Updates

Research Team from US, China, and France Releases Genome Sequence of Bottle Gourd

December 6, 2017

A research team from Boyce Thompson Institute (BTI), the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), and collaborators in China and France, has released the first high-quality genome sequence for the bottle gourd (Lagenaria siceraria) and a reconstructed genome of the most recent Cucurbitaceae ancestor.

The researchers compared the bottle gourd genome sequence to other cucurbit species to reconstruct the ancient genomic history of the Cucurbitaceae family. In the paper published in The Plant Journal, the team reports a high-quality 313.4-Mb genome sequence of a bottle gourd inbred line, USVL1VR-Ls, with a scaffold N50 of 8.7 Mb and the longest of 19.0 Mb. About 98.3% of the assembled scaffolds are anchored to the 11 pseudomolecules. The comparative genomic analysis identifies chromosome-level syntenic relationships between bottle gourd and other cucurbits, as well as lineage-specific gene family expansions in bottle gourd.

The researchers were able to showcase the utility of the genome sequence by locating genes related to one particularly devastating disease: Papaya ring-spot virus (PRSV).

For more details, read the BTI News.