Hřibová, E., Neumann, P., Matsumoto, T., Roux, N., Macas, J., Doležel, J.
BMC PLANT BIOLOGY
10:
204,
2010
Keywords:
Abstract:
Background: Bananas and plantains (Musa spp.) are grown in more than a hundred tropical and subtropical
countries and provide staple food for hundreds of millions of people. They are seed-sterile crops propagated
clonally and this makes them vulnerable to a rapid spread of devastating diseases and at the same time hampers
breeding improved cultivars. Although the socio-economic importance of bananas and plantains cannot be
overestimated, they remain outside the focus of major research programs. This slows down the study of nuclear
genome and the development of molecular tools to facilitate banana improvement.
Results: In this work, we report on the first thorough characterization of the repeat component of the banana
(M. acuminata cv. ‘Calcutta 4′) genome. Analysis of almost 100 Mb of sequence data (0.15× genome coverage)
permitted partial sequence reconstruction and characterization of repetitive DNA, making up about 30% of the
genome. The results showed that the banana repeats are predominantly made of various types of Ty1/copia and
Ty3/gypsy retroelements representing 16 and 7% of the genome respectively. On the other hand, DNA transposons
were found to be rare. In addition to new families of transposable elements, two new satellite repeats were
discovered and found useful as cytogenetic markers. To help in banana sequence annotation, a specific Musa
repeat database was created, and its utility was demonstrated by analyzing the repeat composition of 62 genomic
BAC clones.
Conclusion: A low-depth 454 sequencing of banana nuclear genome provided the largest amount of DNA
sequence data available until now for Musa and permitted reconstruction of most of the major types of DNA
repeats. The information obtained in this study improves the knowledge of the long-range organization of banana
chromosomes, and provides sequence resources needed for repeat masking and annotation during the Musa
genome sequencing project. It also provides sequence data for isolation of DNA markers to be used in genetic
diversity studies and in marker-assisted selection.
Fulltext: contact IEB authors
IEB authors: Jaroslav Doležel,
Eva Hřibová
Čeština
English