Abstract
Tea is a globally consumed non-alcohol beverage with great economic importance. However, lack of the reference genome has largely hampered the utilization of precious tea plant genetic resources towards breeding. To address this issue, we previously generated a high-quality reference genome of tea plant using Illumina and PacBio sequencing technology, which produced a total of 2,124 Gb short and 125 Gb long read data, respectively. A hybrid strategy was employed to assemble the tea genome that has been publicly released. We here described the data framework used to generate, annotate and validate the genome assembly. Besides, we re-predicted the protein-coding genes and annotated their putative functions using more comprehensive omics datasets with improved training models. We reassessed the assembly and annotation quality using the latest version of BUSCO. These data can be utilized to develop new methodologies/tools for better assembly of complex genomes, aid in finding of novel genes, variations and evolutionary clues associated with tea quality, thus help to breed new varieties with high yield and better quality in the future.
Highlights
Background & SummaryTea is the oldest and most prevalent nonalcoholic beverage in the world[1,2]
In comparison with the previously published CSA genome[7], we found that the two varieties of tea plants (CSS and CSA) diverged from their common ancestor ~0.38–1.54 million years ago
We mainly described the plant material and full data sets generated and used to assemble, annotate and validate the tea plant reference genome: (1) raw Illumina whole genome sequencing (WGS) data for genome assembly; (2) raw PacBio sequencing data for genome assembly; (3) raw PacBio RNA sequencing data from mixed tissues of tea plant for gene annotation; (4) eighteen bacterial artificial chromosomes (BACs) and BAC end sequences used for quality validation of genome assembly; and (5) the final assembly and latest release of reference genome of tea plant
Summary
Tea is the oldest and most prevalent nonalcoholic beverage in the world[1,2]. It is made from the cured leaves of tea plant (Camellia sinensis), an important economic crop planted worldwide. The Chinese type tea accounts for over 80% of tea production worldwide and is suitable for the manufacture of six major teas. It has a broader and distinct geographical distribution. We initiated a joint collaborative project to generate a reference-quality genome assembly for the Chinese type tea plant[6]. We identified and functionally validated a gene involved in theanine biosynthesis These results and datasets provide a solid foundation for the tea community to uncover the genetic basis of tea quality and genome evolution[8]. The described sequencing data and newly released annotations in this study will help computational biologist to test the novel methodologies and tools to assemble the complex tree genomes, and facilitate the tea community to better understand the genetic basis of tea quality and genome evolution
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