Genome analysis of the model plant species Nicotiana benthamiana

AURELIANO BOMBARELY; NOE FERNANDEZ-POZO; HERNAN ROSLI; MARINA A. POMBO; ZACHARY B. LIPPMAN; DAVID ZAITLIN; LUCAS A MULLER; GREGORY MARTIN

Beijing

Congreso; The 10th Solanaceae Conference. Genome vs Phenome; 2013

Nicotiana benthamiana is an important model for plant science, particularly in the study of plant-pathogen interactions. N. benthamiana is widely used experimentally because the gene knock-down technology called Virus-Induced Gene Silencing (VIGS) is efficient in this species; VIGS is a technology that has been developed based on extensive studies on gene silencing with viruses and the mechanism for the RNA interference in N. benthamiana. The first draft genome sequence for the N. benthamiana assembly was reported in 2012 providing an important resource for this species and facilitating the design of VIGS experiments, but the initial release of the draft genome did not provide a detailed genome annotation. Here we present an improved assembly, a complete gene annotation and the comparative genomic analysis with other Solanaceae species such as tomato and potato. In addition, new resources for this model species will be released, such as the VIGSTool, a web-based software to design VIGS constructs and BenthamianaCyc, a metabolic pathway database for N. benthamiana genes.