Project description:The naked mole-rat (NMR; Heterocephalus glaber) has recently gained considerable attention in the scientific community for its unique potential to unveil novel insights in the fields of medicine, biochemistry, and evolution. NMRs exhibit unique adaptations that include protracted fertility, cancer resistance, eusociality, and anoxia. This suite of adaptations is not found in other rodent species, suggesting that interrogating conserved and accelerated regions in the NMR genome will find regions of the NMR genome fundamental to their unique adaptations. However, the current NMR genome assembly has limits that make studying structural variations, heterozygosity, and non-coding adaptations challenging. We present a complete diploid naked-mole rat genome assembly by integrating long-read and 10X-linked read genome sequencing of a male NMR and its parents, and Hi-C sequencing in the NMR hypothalamus (N=2). Reads were identified as maternal, paternal or ambiguous (TrioCanu). We then polished genomes with Flye, Racon and Medaka. Assemblies were then scaffolded using the following tools in order: Scaff10X, Salsa2, 3d-DNA, Minimap2-alignment between assemblies, and the Juicebox Assembly Tools. We then subjected the assemblies to another round of polishing, including short-read polishing with Freebayes. We assembled the NMR mitochondrial genome with mitoVGP. Y chromosome contigs were identified by aligning male and female 10X linked reads to the paternal genome and finding male-biased contigs not present in the maternal genome. Contigs were assembled with publicly available male NMR Fibroblast Hi-C-seq data (SRR820318). Both assemblies have their sex chromosome haplotypes merged so that both assemblies have a high-quality X and Y chromosome. Finally, assemblies were evaluated with Quast, BUSCO, and Merqury, which all reported the base-pair quality and contiguity of both assemblies as high-quality. The assembly will next be annotated by Ensembl using public RNA-seq data from multiple tissues (SRP061363). Together, this assembly will provide a high-quality resource to the NMR and comparative genomics communities.

Project description:During the evolution of life on Earth, the conquest of land by plants played a pivotal role producing a boost in land biomass, a substantial drop in atmospheric CO2, an increase in oxygen and the emergence of new terrestrial habitats facilitating land colonization by animals. Therefore, the characterization of the molecular mechanisms that allowed plant terrestralization is a cornerstone in evolutionary studies. Viridiplantae or the green lineage is divided into two clades Chlorophyta or green microalgae and Streptophyta that in turn splits into Embryophyta or land plants and Charophyta. The latest are mainly considered aquatic algae although some facultative terrestrial species has been identified. Charophyta are generally accepted as the extant algal species most closely related to current land plants and, therefore, they are used in evolutionary studies on plant terrestralization. High light irradiance was one of the major stressors that ancestral charophytic algae needed to overcome during the transition from aquatic to terrestrial environments. In this study, we have chosen the facultative terrestrial early charophytic alga Klebsormidium nitens to perform an integrative transcriptomic and metabolomic analysis under high light in order to unveil key mechanisms involved in the early steps of plants terrestralization. We found a fast chloroplast retrograde signaling possibly mediated by reactive oxygen species and the inositol polyphosphate 1-phosphatase (SAL1) and 3′-phosphoadenosine-5′-phosphate (PAP) pathways inducing gene expression and accumulation of specific metabolites. Systems used by both Chlorophyta and Embryophyta were activated such as the xanthophyll cycle with an accumulation of zeaxanthin and protein folding and repair mechanisms constituted by NADPH-dependent thioredoxin reductases, thioredoxin-disulfide reductases and peroxiredoxins. Similarly, cyclic electron flow, specifically the pathway dependent on Proton Gradient Regulation 5, was strongly activated under high light. We detected a simultaneous co-activation of the non-photochemical quenching mechanisms based on LHC-like Stress Related protein and the photosystem II subunit S that are specific to Chlorophyta and Embryophyta respectively. Exclusive Embryophyta systems for the synthesis, sensing and response to the phytohormone auxin were also activated under high light in Klebsormidium leading to an increase in auxin content with the concomitant accumulation of amino acids such as tryptophan, histidine and phenylalanine.

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Embryophyta

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