Disentangling homeologous contigs in allo-tetraploid assembly: application to durum wheat

摘要

BackgroundUsing Next Generation Sequencing, SNP discovery is relatively easy on diploid species and still hampered in polyploid species by the confusion due to homeology. We develop HomeoSplitter; a fast and effective solution to split original contigs obtained by RNAseq into two homeologous sequences. It uses the differential expression of the two homeologous genes in the RNA. We verify that the new sequences are closer to the diploid progenitors of the allopolyploid species than the original contig. By remapping original reads on these new sequences, we also verify that the number of valuable detected SNPs has significantly increased.Thirty accessions of the tetraploid durum wheat (Triticum turgidum, A and B genomes) were sequenced in pooled cDNA libraries. Reads were assembled in a de novo durum assembly. Transcriptomes of the diploid species, Aegilops speltoides (close B genome) and Triticum urartu (A genome) were used as reference to benchmark the method.