Gapless genome assembly of Fusarium verticillioides, a filamentous fungus threatening plant and human health

Abstract

Fusarium verticillioides is a filamentous fungus that causes plant diseases and harms human health through cancer-inducing mycotoxin and life-threatening Fusariosis. Given its threat to agriculture and public health, genome assembly of this fungus is critical to our understanding of its pathobiology and developing antifungal drugs. Here, we report a gap-free genome assembly of F. verticillioides using PacBio HiFi data and high-throughput chromosome capture (Hi-C) sequencing data. The assembled 42.0 Mb sequence contains eleven gapless chromosomes capturing all centromeres and 19 of all 22 telomeres. This assembly represents a significant improvement over previous version on contiguity (contig N50: 4.3 Mb), completeness (BUSCO score: 99.0%) and correctness (QV: 88.8). A total of 15,230 protein-coding genes were predicted, 6.2% of which are newly annotated genes. In addition, we identified three-dimension chromatin structures such as TADs-like structures and chromatin loops based on Hi-C data of ultra-high coverage. This gap-free genome of F. verticillioides is an excellent resource for further panoramic understanding mechanisms of fungal genome evolution, mycotoxin production and pathogenesis on plant and human host.