W221 Recent advances in the melon genome project

Date: Sunday, January 15, 2012
Time: 4:30 PM
Room: Pacific Salon 1
Walter Sanseverino , CRAG (CSIC-IRTA-UAB-UB), Cerdanyola del Vallés (Barcelona), Spain
Melonomics Consortium , CRAG (CSIC-IRTA-UAB, UB)

The draft sequence of the melon genome (Cucumis melo L.) was obtained using a whole genome shotgun approach based on 454 pyrosequencing in the framework of the MELONOMICS Consortium. A total of 375 Mb (80% of the estimated genome size) was assembled in 1,599 scaffolds and 29,865 contigs. A total of 87.5% of the genome assembly was anchored to the melon genetic map. The melon genome encodes 27,427 genes. Several studies were performed on specific gene families involved in disease resistance and fruit related processes. The complete carotenoid and sugar pathways were updated and annotated, while a specific disease resistance gene pipeline was used to predict 81 NBS-LRR genes and more than 300 transmembrane receptors putatively involved in disease resistance processes. Orthology and paralogy results were used to produce a clear picture of syntenic relationships between melon and four other plant species and to highlight duplicated regions inside the genome. Additionally, seven melon accessions were resequenced to a 20X coverage and mapped to the reference genome, allowing the identification of SNPs and INDELs on a massively parallel scale.