A near-complete genome assembly for northern wild rice (Zizania palustris L.)

Meanwhile, Z. palustris underwent a recent, species-specific long terminal repeat (LTR) expansion, associated with its larger genome size. We identified two genomic blocks in the Z. palustris and Z. latifolia genomes that exhibit strong synteny with the rice phytocassane biosynthetic gene cluster. The centromeric satellite repeats in Z. palustris identified in this study primarily comprised a 145 bp repetitive unit.

The findings also revealed centromere homogenisation and rearrangement accompanied by LTR invasion in NWR. Among the genes missing in the previous NWR genome, we observed LTR insertion events that resulted in expanded gene lengths in our updated NWR genome. The present updated NWR genome provides a valuable resource for crop genetic improvement, functional gene discovery, and research on critical biological processes.The whole-genome sequence data reported in this paper were also deposited in the Genome Warehouse in National Genomics Data Center, Beijing Institute of Genomics, Chinese Academy of Sciences/China National Center for Bioinformation under accession number GWHFIIQ00000000.1 at ngdc.cncb.ac.cn/gwh.