AsianScientist (Oct. 27, 2015) – Researchers have generated a high quality draft genome of adzuki bean, in which 86.11 percent (466.7 Mb of 542 Mb) genome with scaffold N50 size of 1.29 Mb was assembled.
This work, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, was a collaboration between Dr. Wan Ping from Beijing University of Agriculture, Drs. Ling Hongqing and Tian Zhixi from Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and BGI-Shenzhen.
Adzuki beans (Vigna angularis) are well known as a non-oil legume crop that has been grown in more than 30 countries of the world. It is used as an important source of starch, digestible protein, mineral elements and vitamins for at least a billion people. Compared to soybeans, adzuki beans have much more starch (57.06 percent versus 25.3 percent) and much less crude fat (0.59 percent vs. 22.5 percent).
In addition to analyzing typical genome features, e.g. repetitive DNA, gene prediction, gene family analysis, they also revealed that adzuki bean is more conserved with common bean by comparison analysis with six sequenced legume genomes.
More importantly, through comparative genomic and transcriptome analyses, they demonstrated that the significant difference in starch and fat content between adzuki bean and soybean is caused by the transcriptional abundance, rather than copy number variations, of the genes related to starch and oil synthesis.
Furthermore, re-sequencing of 49 accessions including 11 wild, 11 semi-wild, 17 domesticated and 10 improved varieties and population analyses provided strong selection signals in domestication and revealed that semi-wild adzuki bean is the progenitor species of cultivated adzuki bean.
The genome sequence of adzuki bean will facilitate the identification of agronomically important genes and accelerate the improvement of adzuki bean.
The article can be found at: Yang et al. (2015) Genome sequencing of adzuki bean (Vigna angularis) provides insight into high starch and low fat accumulation and domestication.
———
Source: Chinese Academy of Sciences; Photo: Shutterstock.
Disclaimer: This article does not necessarily reflect the views of AsianScientist or its staff.
