Martin Lysak, together with the team from Huazhong Agricultural University in China (led by Xianhong Ge), coordinated the sequencing of the largest ever reported genome in the Brassicaceae family. The genome belongs to Matthiola incana, commonly known as stock, a fragrant ornamental species that is grown both as a cut flower and as a bedding plant. The genome of Matthiola (2 G) is twelve times larger than that of Arabidopsis, even though both species have a similar number of chromosomes. We have
succeeded in obtaining a high-quality chromosome-scale genome assembly of M. incana by integrating PacBio HiFi reads, Illumina short reads and Hi-C data. Our results suggest that the primary reason for genome obesity in M. incana is the massive expansion of long terminal repeat retrotransposons (LTR-RTs), particularly from the Angela, Athila and Retand families. The work was published in Plant Biotechnology Journal.
