Abstract
The Eurasian plant Stipa capillata is the most widespread species within feather grasses. Many taxa of the genus are dominants in steppe plant communities and can be used for their classification and in studies related to climate change. Moreover, some species are of economic importance mainly as fodder plants and can be used for soil remediation processes. Although large-scale molecular data has begun to appear, there is still no complete or draft genome for any Stipa species. Thus, here we present a single-molecule long-read sequencing dataset generated using the Pacific Biosciences Sequel System. A draft genome of about 1004 Mb was obtained with a contig N50 length of 351 kb. Importantly, here we report 81,224 annotated protein-coding genes, present 77,614 perfect and 58 unique imperfect SSRs, reveal the putative allopolyploid nature of S. capillata, investigate the evolutionary history of the genus, demonstrate structural heteroplasmy of the chloroplast genome and announce for the first time the mitochondrial genome in Stipa. The assembled nuclear, mitochondrial and chloroplast genomes provide a significant source of genetic data for further works on phylogeny, hybridisation and population studies within Stipa and the grass family Poaceae.
Highlights
In the year 2000, the Arabidopsis thaliana L. genome became the first plant genome to be completely sequenced and assembled[1]
The number of sequenced plant genomes is rapidly increasing year by year serving as a fundamental resource for various genomic studies
We present a 1004 Mb genome with the 23 × coverage of the most widespread feather grass species, S. capillata, using single-molecule real-time (SMRT) Pacific Biosciences (PacBio) sequencing
Summary
In the year 2000, the Arabidopsis thaliana L. genome became the first plant genome to be completely sequenced and assembled[1]. In comparison to other kingdoms, plants have very large g enomes[13,25,26], high ploidy level[27] and the abundance of repetitive sequences[28,29,30] To face these issues, the third-generation sequencing has been applied. For the goals of the study we chose to sequence the entire genome of S. capillata (Fig. 1) as it is the most widespread taxon within the genus, growing on sandy to loamy, nutrient poor soils in the dry grasslands of Eurasia[61] This species is increasingly attracting the interest of conservation biologists due to its large distribution range, common occurrence in the Eurasian steppes and pseudosteppes, a limited number of refugia in Europe and both great morphological and genetic variability within its r ange[62,63,64]
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