Reference genome assemblies reveal the origin and evolution of allohexaploid oat

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41588-022-01127-7

Nature Genetics，54，1248–1258（2022）

Yuanying Peng，Honghai Yan,Laichun Guo,Cao Deng,Chunlong Wang,Yubo Wang,Lipeng Kang,Pingping Zhou,Kaiquan Yu,Xiaolong Dong,Xiaomeng Liu,Zongyi Sun,Yun Peng,Jun Zhao,Di Deng,Yinghong Xu,Ying Li,Qiantao Jiang,Yan Li,Liming Wei,Jirui Wang,Jian Ma,Ming Hao,Wei Li,Houyang Kang,Zhengsong Peng,Dengcai Liu,Jizeng Jia,Youliang Zheng,Tao Ma，Yuming Wei，Fei Lu & Changzhong Ren

Abstract

Common oat (Avena sativa) is an important cereal crop serving as a valuable source of forage and human food. Although reference genomes of many important crops have been generated, such work in oat has lagged behind, primarily owing to its large, repeat-rich polyploid genome. Here, using Oxford Nanopore ultralong sequencing and Hi-C technologies, we have generated a reference-quality genome assembly of hulless common oat, comprising 21 pseudomolecules with a total length of 10.76 Gb and contig N50 of 75.27 Mb. We also produced genome assemblies for diploid and tetraploidAvenaancestors, which enabled the identification of oat subgenomes and provided insights into oat chromosomal evolution. The origin of hexaploid oat is inferred from whole-genome sequencing, chloroplast genomes and transcriptome assemblies of differentAvenaspecies. These findings and the high-quality reference genomes presented here will facilitate the full use of crop genetic resources to accelerate oat improvement.