Project description:Dikaryotic rust fungi maintain two distinct haploid nuclei for most of their life cycle, making their large, repeat-rich genomes difficult to assemble and phase. Here we present haplotype-phased, near chromosome-scale genome assemblies for the poplar rust pathogens Melampsora larici-populina 98AG31 and Melampsora allii-populina 12AY07, generated using PacBio HiFi sequencing and Hi-C-guided scaffolding. For each species, we resolve 18 chromosomes per haplotype, providing the first chromosome-level representations of poplar rust fungal species. M. larici-populina diploid assembly spans ~203 Mb, while M. allii-populina reaches ~416 Mb, with high completeness and strong collinearity between haplotypes.
Project description:The transcriptome of Melampsora-larici-populina was analysed in urediniospores, germlings and during poplar leaf infection. The array probes were designed from gene models taken from the Joint Genome Institute (JGI, Department of Energy) Melampsora larici-populina genome sequence version 1. One aim of this study was to verify the expression of the automatically annotated gene models in various tissues and development stages. Another goal was to monitor gene expression profiles during poplar leaf infection and to highlight tissue-specific transcripts, e.g. in planta up-regulated transcripts for further analyses.
