植物复杂基因组与泛基因组研究现状与展望

基因组是指一个生物体内遗传物质的总和,是生物学研究的关键之一.自2000年拟南芥基因组被测序发表以来,已有超过800个植物基因组相继被破解,极大促进了植物分子生物学、遗传学等领域的发展.即便如此,植物基因组学研究仍然面临一系列挑战,包括高杂合、高重复度、高倍性等复杂基因组的组装和泛基因组的构建等.本文从植物基因组学的发展概况、基因组测序技术、组装算法等三个方面,全面展示了植物基因组的快速发展.其中,介绍了简单基因组装和复杂基因组装的相关策略,总结了“端粒到端粒”(telomere-to-telomere或称T2T)的组装和泛基因组构建方法以及其重要性.最后,对未来植物基因组的发展进行了展望,认为随着技术的不断进步,基因组解析技术和方法将会更加完善,为植物基因组的深入研究提供更多支持.本文为植物T2T、复杂基因组组装和泛基因组的构建方法研究提供了参考依据.     

崖壁植物太行菊与长裂太行菊全基因组大小及特征分析北大核心CSCD

太行菊(Opisthopappus taihangensis)、长裂太行菊(O.longilobus),为太行山特有多年生崖壁草本植物,菊科(Compositae)重要野生资源,具有较高的经济与生态价值。为确定适合两物种的全基因组测序策略,该研究利用流式细胞法和高通量测序技术,分析两物种基因组大小、杂合率、重复序列及GC含量等信息。结果表明:(1)流式细胞法估算太行菊基因组大小约为2.1 Gb,长裂太行菊基因组大小约为2.4 Gb。(2)高通量测序修正后太行菊基因组大小为3.13 Gb,重复序列比例为84.35%,杂合度为0.99%,GC含量为36.56%;长裂太行菊基因组为3.18 Gb,重复序列比例为83.83%,杂合度为1.17%,GC含量为36.62%。(3)初步组装后GC含量分布及平均深度存在异常,出现分层现象,可能是两物种基因组杂合率较高所致。综上结果表明,太行菊、长裂太行菊均属于高重复、高杂合、大基因组的复杂基因组,建议使用Illumina+PacBio测序组装策略,进行全基因组测序分析。     

真菌基因组de novo测序组装的方法与实践

真菌基因组较其他真核生物基因组结构简单,长度短,易于测序、组装与注释,因此真菌基因组是研究真核生物基因组的模型。为研究真菌基因组组装策略,本研究基于Illumina HiSeq测序平台对烟曲霉菌株An16007基因组测序,分别使用5种de novo组装软件ABySS、SOAP-denovo、Velvet、MaSuRCA和IDBA-UD组装基因组,然后通过Augustus软件进行基因预测,BUSCO软件评估组装结果。研究发现,5种组装软件对基因组组装结果不同,ABySS组装的基因组较其他4种组装软件具有更高的完整性和准确性,且预测的基因数量较高,因此,ABySS更适合本研究基因组的组装。本研究提供了真菌de novo测序、组装及组装质量评估的技术流程,为基因组<100 Mb的真菌或其他生物基因组的研究提供参考。     

基于染色质交互数据的基因组组装方法

伴随着高通量DNA测序技术的不断推陈出新和价格持续下调,如何将scaffolds定位于染色体逐渐成为完整参考基因组获得的关键。高通量染色质构象捕获技术(High-throughput chromosome conformation capture,简称Hi-C)的出现为基因组组装过程中scaffolds快速锚位提供了契机。相比于传统的基因组组装方法,基于染色质交互组装基因组的策略实验操作简易、实验和时间成本较低、正确率及分辨率高,在基因组相对复杂的多倍型和高度杂合的物种中有着更大的应用前景。但由于技术本身的限制,该方法还存在分辨率、背景噪声等问题需要解决,有待进一步改进和提高。     

基于第二代测序技术的细菌基因组与转录组研究策略简介

随着基于第二代测序技术的细菌基因组与转录组研究越来越广泛,选择合适的研究策略变得越来越重要.就基于第二代测序技术的细菌基因组和转录组研究策略进行综述,并简要介绍细菌基因组和转录组研究中的机遇和挑战.综述细菌基因组与转录组研究的常规方法及步骤,并简要地介绍存在的问题.细菌基因组和转录组研究策略为大多数细菌的研究提供了一个...     

RAD-seq技术在基因组研究中的现状及展望

Restriction-site associated DNA sequencing(RAD-seq)技术是在二代测序基础上发展起来的一项基于全基因组酶切位点的简化基因组测序技术。该方法技术流程简单, 不受有无参考基因组的限制, 可大大简化基因组的复杂性, 减少实验费用, 通过一次测序就可以获得数以万计的多态性标记。目前, RAD-seq技术已成功应用于超高密度遗传图谱的构建、重要性状的精细定位、辅助基因组序列组装、群体基因组学以及系统发生学等基因组研究热点领域。文章主要介绍了RAD-seq的技术原理、技术发展及其在基因组研究中的广泛应用。鉴于RAD-seq方法的独特性, 该技术必将在复杂基因组研究领域具有广泛的应用前景。     

樟树全基因组调查

樟树是我国特有的珍贵用材和经济树种,富含多糖多酚、萜类等次生代谢物质,是香精香料、油脂化工和医药等的重要原料树种。本研究采用高通量测序技术(Illumina HiseqTM2000)首次测定了樟树基因组大小,并利用生物信息方法估计樟树杂合率、重复序列情况和GC含量等基因组信息,为全基因组测序策略的选择提供依据。主要结论如下:(1)樟树基因组大小粗略估计为760 Mb左右;(2)樟树基因组有较高的杂合率和一定的重复,杂合率约为0.65%;(3)由于樟树杂合率较高,全基因组鸟枪法策略不适合该基因组测序分析,可尝试使用BAC-to-BAC策略或fosmid策略,有利于樟树基因组的序列拼接和组装。     

基于Survey分析的濒危植物四合木基因组研究

评价濒危植物四合木（Tetraena mongolica）基因组的大小及复杂程度,开展基因组研究可揭示四合木的超旱生机制,进一步挖掘其特色基因资源。为更好破解四合木的全基因组信息,采用第二代高通量测序技术的基因组Survey分析技术开展四合木基因组大小估测研究,并利用生物信息学方法估计了四合木杂合率、重复序列和GC含量等基因组信息。结果表明：四合木基因组大小为1 079.25 Mb,修正后的基因组大小为1 065.84Mb,杂合率为0.76%,重复序列比例为75.25%,GC含量为33.57%。在经过四合木基因组初步组装后,获得3502 126条contigs,总计682 Mb,其N50为187 bp,推测四合木基因组属于同源四倍体复杂基因组,全基因组测序组装难度较大。由于四合木的高杂合率,后续可采用第三代高通量测序技术（单分子测序）同时结合染色质区域捕获技术,有望最终获得高质量的四合木全基因图谱。     

罗汉果全基因组Survey分析

罗汉果是广西特有药用及甜料植物,其主要成分之一甜苷V作为天然、非糖甜味剂,具有广阔的开发前景,但罗汉果目前完全来自于栽培,适生区狭窄,连作障碍严重,加之含量低导致甜苷V生产成本居高不下,严重限制了其应用。为了减少盲目性,在大规模全基因组深度测序之前,先做低覆盖度的基因组Survey测序,评价基因组的大小及复杂程度,以确定适合该植物全基因组的测序研究策略。该研究采用第二代高通量测序技术(Illumina Hiseq TM 2000)首次测定了罗汉果基因组大小,并利用生物信息学方法估计罗汉果杂合率、重复序列和GC含量等基因组信息。结果表明:(1)获得了18.1 Gb罗汉果基因组测序数据,基因组大小估计为344.95 Mb左右,测序深度为52×;(2)从K-mer分布曲线发现罗汉果基因组有明显的杂合峰,杂合率达1.5%,基因组高杂合导致组装的结果中Contig N50和Scaffold N50的长度比预期的要短很多,还造成GC平均深度及含量分布明显异常,存在一个低深度分布区域。基因组主峰后面有微弱的重复峰,说明罗汉果存在较多的重复序列;(3)由于罗汉果存在高杂合率和重复序列较多的特点,该基因组测序分析仅采用全基因组鸟枪法(WGS)策略不合适,为了更好地对全基因组进行序列拼接和组装,可尝试结合采用Fosmid-to-Fosmid或BAC-to-BAC策略。该研究结果对于揭示罗汉果产量、有效成分含量、发育及抗病虫的分子机制,以及通过分子育种来提高甜苷V含量和降低生产成本具有重要意义,为全基因组测序策略的选择提供了依据。     

基于三代测序技术的微生物组学研究进展

微生物在人类生活中无处不在, 过去人们对微生物的认识仅停留在单菌培养和定性研究上, 而测序技术的发展极大地促进了微生物组学的研究。越来越多的证据表明: 人体共生微生物、特别是肠道微生物与人类健康息息相关。 二代测序技术凭借其高通量、高准确率和低成本的特点, 成为微生物组学研究中的主流测序技术。但是随着研究的深入, 二代测序技术的短读长(< 450 bp)增加了后续数据分析和基因组拼接难度, 也限制了该技术在未来研究中的应用。在此背景下, 第三代测序技术应运而生。第三代测序技术又称单分子测序, 能够直接对单个DNA分子进行实时测序, 而不需要经过PCR扩增。第三代测序技术的平均读长在2-10 kb左右, 最高可以达到2.2 Mb, 实现了长序列的高通量测序。凭借其超长的测序读长、无GC偏好性等优势, 三代测序技术为微生物基因组全长测序, 组装完整可靠的基因组提供了新的方法。本文在描述三代测序的技术特点和原理的基础上, 重点介绍了三代测序技术在微生物16S/18S rRNA基因测序、单菌的基因组组装以及宏基因组中的研究应用和进展。     

Identifying the causes and consequences of assembly gaps using a multiplatform genome assembly of a bird‐of‐paradise

Genome assemblies are currently being produced at an impressive rate by consortia and individual laboratories. The low costs and increasing efficiency of sequencing technologies now enable assembling genomes at unprecedented quality and contiguity. However, the difficulty in assembling repeat‐rich and GC‐rich regions (genomic “dark matter”) limits insights into the evolution of genome structure and regulatory networks. Here, we compare the efficiency of currently available sequencing technologies (short/linked/long reads and proximity ligation maps) and combinations thereof in assembling genomic dark matter. By adopting different de novo assembly strategies, we compare individual draft assemblies to a curated multiplatform reference assembly and identify the genomic features that cause gaps within each assembly. We show that a multiplatform assembly implementing long‐read, linked‐read and proximity sequencing technologies performs best at recovering transposable elements, multicopy MHC genes, GC‐rich microchromosomes and the repeat‐rich W chromosome. Telomere‐to‐telomere assemblies are not a reality yet for most organisms, but by leveraging technology choice it is now possible to minimize genome assembly gaps for downstream analysis. We provide a roadmap to tailor sequencing projects for optimized completeness of both the coding and noncoding parts of nonmodel genomes.     

高通量测序技术在农作物全基因组序列测定中的应用概览

近几年飞速发展的高通量测序技术(next generation sequencing,NGS)在生命科学研究的各个领域充分展现了其低成本、高通量和应用面广等优势。在现代农业生物技术领域,利用高通量测序技术,科学家们不仅能更经济而高效对农作物、模式植物或不同栽培品种进行深入的全基因组测序、重测序,也可以对成百上千的栽培品种进行高效而准确的遗传差异分析、分子标记分析、连锁图谱分析、表观遗传学分析、转录组分析,进而改进农作物的育种技术,加快新品种的育种研究。其中,获得农作物的全基因组序列是其他研究和分析的基础。本文通过介绍近年来发表的一些利用高通量测序技术进行的农作物全基因组测定和组装的工作,展示高通量测序技术在现代农业生物技术领域的广泛前景以及其建立起来的研究基础。     

Whole genome sequencing and its applications in medical genetics

Fundamental improvement was made for genome sequencing since the next-generation sequencing (NGS) came out in the 2000s. The newer technologies make use of the power of massively-parallel short-read DNA sequencing, genome alignment and assembly methods to digitally and rapidly search the genomes on a revolutionary scale, which enable large-scale whole genome sequencing (WGS) accessible and practical for researchers. Nowadays, whole genome sequencing is more and more prevalent in detecting the genetics of diseases, studying causative relations with cancers, making genome-level comparative analysis, reconstruction of human population history, and giving clinical implications and instructions. In this review, we first give a typical pipeline of whole genome sequencing, including the lab template preparation, sequencing, genome assembling and quality control, variants calling and annotations. We compare the difference between whole genome and whole exome sequencing (WES), and explore a wide range of applications of whole genome sequencing for both mendelian diseases and complex diseases in medical genetics. We highlight the impact of whole genome sequencing in cancer studies, regulatory variant analysis, predictive medicine and precision medicine, as well as discuss the challenges of the whole genome sequencing.      

The (in)complete organelle genome: exploring the use and nonuse of available technologies for characterizing mitochondrial and plastid chromosomes

Not long ago, scientists paid dearly in time, money and skill for every nucleotide that they sequenced. Today, DNA sequencing technologies epitomize the slogan ‘faster, easier, cheaper and more’, and in many ways, sequencing an entire genome has become routine, even for the smallest laboratory groups. This is especially true for mitochondrial and plastid genomes. Given their relatively small sizes and high copy numbers per cell, organelle DNAs are currently among the most highly sequenced kind of chromosome. But accurately characterizing an organelle genome and the information it encodes can require much more than DNA sequencing and bioinformatics analyses. Organelle genomes can be surprisingly complex and can exhibit convoluted and unconventional modes of gene expression. Unravelling this complexity can demand a wide assortment of experiments, from pulsed‐field gel electrophoresis to Southern and Northern blots to RNA analyses. Here, we show that it is exactly these types of ‘complementary’ analyses that are often lacking from contemporary organelle genome papers, particularly short ‘genome announcement’ articles. Consequently, crucial and interesting features of organelle chromosomes are going undescribed, which could ultimately lead to a poor understanding and even a misrepresentation of these genomes and the genes they express. High‐throughput sequencing and bioinformatics have made it easy to sequence and assemble entire chromosomes, but they should not be used as a substitute for or at the expense of other types of genomic characterization methods.     

Current challenges in de novo plant genome sequencing and assembly

Genome sequencing is now affordable, but assembling plant genomes de novo remains challenging. We assess the state of the art of assembly and review the best practices for the community.     

Multiplex sequencing of bacterial artificial chromosomes for assembling complex plant genomes

Hierarchical shotgun sequencing remains the method of choice for assembling high‐quality reference sequences of complex plant genomes. The efficient exploitation of current high‐throughput technologies and powerful computational facilities for large‐insert clone sequencing necessitates the sequencing and assembly of a large number of clones in parallel. We developed a multiplexed pipeline for shotgun sequencing and assembling individual bacterial artificial chromosomes (BACs) using the Illumina sequencing platform. We illustrate our approach by sequencing 668 barley BACs (Hordeum vulgare L.) in a single Illumina HiSeq 2000 lane. Using a newly designed parallelized computational pipeline, we obtained sequence assemblies of individual BACs that consist, on average, of eight sequence scaffolds and represent >98% of the genomic inserts. Our BAC assemblies are clearly superior to a whole‐genome shotgun assembly regarding contiguity, completeness and the representation of the gene space. Our methods may be employed to rapidly obtain high‐quality assemblies of a large number of clones to assemble map‐based reference sequences of plant and animal species with complex genomes by sequencing along a minimum tiling path.     

Methods, challenges, and promise of next-generation sequencing in cancer biology

It is generally accepted that cancers result from the aggregation of somatic mutations. The emergence of next-generation sequencing (NGS) technologies during the past half-decade has enabled studies of cancer genomes with high sensitivity and resolution through whole-genome and whole-exome sequencing approaches, among others. This saltatory advance introduces the possibility of assembling multiple cancer genomes for analysis in a cost-effective manner. Analytical approaches are now applied to the detection of a number of somatic genome alterations, including nucleotide substitutions, insertions/deletions, copy number variations, and chromosomal rearrangements. This review provides a thorough introduction to the cancer genomics pipeline as well as a case study of these methods put into practice.     

Assembly and RNA‐free annotation of highly heterozygous genomes: The case of the thick‐billed murre (Uria lomvia)

Thanks to a dramatic reduction in sequencing costs followed by a rapid development of bioinformatics tools, genome assembly and annotation have become accessible to many researchers in recent years. Among tetrapods, birds have genomes that display many features that facilitate their assembly and annotation, such as small genome size, low number of repeats and highly conserved genomic structure. However, we found that high genomic heterozygosity could have a great impact on the quality of the genome assembly of the thick‐billed murre (Uria lomvia), an arctic colonial seabird. In this study, we tested the performance of three genome assemblers, ray /sscape , soapdenovo 2 and platanus , in assembling the highly heterozygous genome of the thick‐billed murre. Our results show that platanus , an assembler specifically designed for heterozygous genomes, outperforms the other two approaches and produces a highly contiguous (N50 = 15.8 Mb) and complete genome assembly (93% presence of genes from the Benchmarking Universal Single Copy Ortholog [BUSCO] gene set). Additionally, we annotated the thick‐billed murre genome using a homology‐based approach that takes advantage of the genomic resources available for birds and other taxa. Our study will be useful for those researchers who are approaching assembly and annotation of highly heterozygous genomes, or genomes of species of conservation concern, and/or who have limited financial resources.     

The maize genome as a model for efficient sequence analysis of large plant genomes

The genomes of flowering plants vary in size from about 0.1 to over 100 gigabase pairs (Gbp), mostly because of polyploidy and variation in the abundance of repetitive elements in intergenic regions. High-quality sequences of the relatively small genomes of Arabidopsis (0.14 Gbp) and rice (0.4 Gbp) have now been largely completed. The sequencing of plant genomes that have a more representative size (the mean for flowering plant genomes is 5.6 Gbp) has been seen as a daunting task, partly because of their size and partly because of the numerous highly conserved repeats. Nevertheless, creative strategies and powerful new tools have been generated recently in the plant genetics community, so that sequencing large plant genomes is now a realistic possibility. Maize (2.4-2.7 Gbp) will be the first gigabase-size plant genome to be sequenced using these novel approaches. Pilot studies on maize indicate that the new gene-enrichment, gene-finishing and gene-orientation technologies are efficient, robust and comprehensive. These strategies will succeed in sequencing the gene-space of large genome plants, and in locating all of these genes and adjacent sequences on the genetic and physical maps.