High Nucleotide Substitution Rates Associated with Retrotransposon Proliferation Drive Dynamic Secretome Evolution in Smut Pathogens.

ABSTRACT: Transposable elements (TEs) play a pivotal role in shaping diversity in eukaryotic genomes. The covered smut pathogen on barley, Ustilago hordei, encountered a recent genome expansion. Using long reads, we assembled genomes of 6 U. hordei strains and 3 sister species, to study this genome expansion. We found that larger genome sizes can mainly be attributed to a higher genome fraction of long terminal repeat retrotransposons (LTR-RTs). In the studied smut genomes, LTR-RTs fractions are the largest in U. hordei and are positively correlated with the mating-type locus sizes, which is up to ~560 kb in U. hordei. Furthermore, LTR-RTs were found to be associated with higher nucleotide substitution levels, as these occur in specific genome regions of smut species with

SUBMITTER: Depotter JRL 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9603552 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature