Chromosome-scale genome assembly of bread wheat’s wild relativeTriticum timopheevii

Grewal, Surbhi; Yang, Cai-yun; Scholefield, Duncan; Ashling, Stephen; Ghosh, Sreya; Swarbreck, David; Collins, Joanna; Yao, Eric; Sen, Taner Z.; Wilson, Michael; Yant, Levi; King, Ian P.; King, Julie

Abstract

Wheat (Triticum aestivum) is one of the most important food crops with an urgent need for increase in its production to feed the growing world. Triticum timopheevii (2n = 4x = 28) is an allotetraploid wheat wild relative species containing the At and G genomes that has been exploited in many pre-breeding programmes for wheat improvement. In this study, we report the generation of a chromosome-scale reference genome assembly of T. timopheevii accession PI 94760 based on PacBio HiFi reads and chromosome conformation capture (Hi-C). The assembly comprised a total size of 9.35 Gb, featuring a contig N50 of 42.4 Mb, and 166,325 predicted gene models. DNA methylation analysis showed that the G genome had on average more methylated bases than the At genome. The G genome was also more closely related to the S genome of Aegilops speltoides than to the B genome of hexaploid or tetraploid wheat. In summary, the T. timopheevii genome assembly provides a valuable resource for genome-informed discovery of agronomically important genes for food security.

Citation

Grewal, S., Yang, C.-Y., Scholefield, D., Ashling, S., Ghosh, S., Swarbreck, D., Collins, J., Yao, E., Sen, T. Z., Wilson, M., Yant, L., King, I. P., & King, J. (2024). Chromosome-scale genome assembly of bread wheat’s wild relativeTriticum timopheevii

• Working Paper Type: Preprint
• Online Publication Date: Jan 17, 2024
• Publication Date: Jan 17, 2024
• Deposit Date: Feb 28, 2025
• Publicly Available Date: Feb 28, 2025
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1101/2024.01.16.575864
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/30154041
• Publisher URL: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.01.16.575864v1