BioProject

The wild relatives of the cultivated potato provide a rich, unique and diverse source of genetic variation for potato breeding. More...

The wild relatives of the cultivated potato provide a rich, unique and diverse source of genetic variation for potato breeding. In particular, the diploid (2n=2x=24) wild species S. commersonii has attracted significant research interest for its hugh resistance to biotic and abiotic stress, with particular emphasis to cold tolerance. We sequenced and de novo assembled the genome of S. commersonii to 103x coverage using Illumina technology producing a 862 Mb draft genome with N50 of 44,303bp. Among the 39,290 predicted protein-coding genes, we manually annotated 1.424 non-redundant Nucleotide Binding Site-encoding Resistance gene candidates and identified 126 cold-related genes in S. commersonii, which lack of orthologs in S. tuberosum. Interestingly, 18.882 long non-coding RNAs (lncRNA) were identified, about which 20% have been shown to be targets of cold responsive genes. The draft genome sequence of S. commersonii substantially increases our understanding of the domesticated germplasm. Comparison with other Solanum reference genomes allows the characterization of genetic variations present in potato crop, contributing to translate new knowledge acquired into advances in crop stability and worsening plight of global climate and environment changes. Less...