Abstract
Centipedegrass [Eremochloa ophiuroides (Munro) Hack.], a member of the Panicoideae subfamily, is one of the most important warm-season turfgrasses originating from China. This grass has an extremely developed prostrate growth habit and has been widely used in transitional and warm climatic regions. To better understand the genetic basis of important biological characteristics, such as prostrate growth and seed yield, in warm-season turfgrasses, we present a high-quality reference genome for centipedegrass and use PacBio, BioNano, and Hi-C technologies to anchor the 867.43 Mb genome assembly into nine pseudochromosomes, with a scaffold N50 of 86.05 Mb and 36,572 annotated genes. Centipedegrass was most closely related to sorghum and diverged from their common ancestor ~16.8 Mya. We detected a novel chromosome reshuffling event in centipedegrass, namely, the nest chromosome fusion event in which fusion of chromosomes 8 and 10 of sorghum into chromosome 3 of centipedegrass likely occurred after the divergence of centipedegrass from sorghum. The typical prostrate growth trait in centipedegrass may be linked to the expansion of candidate PROSTRATE GROWTH 1 (PROG1) genes on chromosome 2. Two orthologous genes of OsPROG1, EoPROG1, and EoPROG2, were confirmed to increase the stem number and decrease the stem angle in Arabidopsis. Collectively, our assembled reference genome of centipedegrass offers new knowledge and resources to dissect the genome evolution of Panicoideae and accelerate genome-assisted breeding and improvement of plant architecture in turf plants.
Highlights
Centipedegrass [Eremochloa ophiuroides (Munro) Hack.]is an indigenous, perennial warm-season (C4) grass speciesWang et al Horticulture Research (2021)8:201the genomic features that underlie these important biological characteristics are still unclear
Chromosome structural evolution in E. ophiuroides In our study, massive collinear blocks were detected by intergenic analyses between centipedegrass, brachypodium, rice, sorghum, maize, and foxtail millet, which revealed a close evolutionary relationship among these grass species
The apparent difference in genome size and chromosome numbers between centipedegrass and other grass species implied that centipedegrass chromosomes may have undergone different rearrangements from other species during its evolution
Summary
Centipedegrass [Eremochloa ophiuroides (Munro) Hack.]is an indigenous, perennial warm-season (C4) grass speciesWang et al Horticulture Research (2021)8:201the genomic features that underlie these important biological characteristics are still unclear. E. ophiuroides belongs to the genus Eremochloa in the family Poaceae and subfamily Panicoideae[5] It is a diploid species with a somatic chromosome number of. E. ophiuroides is closely related to several main crop species with complex genomes, such as maize (Zea mays), sorghum (Sorghum bicolor), and foxtail millet (Setaria italica). Among these species that belong to Panicoideae, maize underwent a separate whole-genome duplication (WGD) event, with a chromosome number 2n = 2x = 20 and a size of ~2.3 Gb9,10; the sorghum genome is ~730 Mb in size, with a chromosome number of 2n = 2x = 20, and includes large transposon structures and substantial genomic rearrangements[11]; and the foxtail millet genome underwent chromosome reshuffling events, with a genome size of ~423 Mb and chromosome number of 2n = 2x = 1812. E. ophiuroides presents a comparable genome size to sorghum, its chromosome number is closer to that of foxtail millet. This implies that the E. ophiuroides genome most likely formed through a series of genomic events that remain to be determined
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