Genome assembly of Stewartia sinensis reveals origin and evolution of orphan genes in Theaceae.

ABSTRACT: Orphan genes play crucial roles in diverse biological processes, but the evolutionary trajectories and functional divergence remain largely unexplored. The Theaceae family, including the economically and culturally important tea plant, offers a distinctive model to examine these aspects. Here, we integrated Nanopore long-read sequencing, Illumina short-read sequencing, and Hi-C methods to decode a pseudo-chromosomal genome assembly of Stewartia sinensis, from the earliest-diverging tribe of Theaceae, spanning 2.95 Gb. Comparative genomic analysis revealed the absence of recent whole-genome duplication events in the Theaceae ancestor, highlighting tandem duplications as the predominant mechanism of gene expansion. We identified 31,331 orphan genes, some of which appear to have ancient origi

SUBMITTER: Cheng L 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11876429 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature