A New Oat Smut Genome Sequencing and the Unique GENE Repertoire Among Smut Pathogens

Smut diseases are caused by several species of Ustilaginaceae fungi which mainly affect Poaceae family members, leading to worldwide yield losses in  agronomically important crops as cereals, sugarcane, and forage grasses. To understand the repertoire of genes particular of each smut species we are performing a comparative analysis among the genomes available. Also, the genome of a smut isolated from oat was sequenced using Illumina HiSeq platform. The number reads added to 104,728,060 paired-end reads generating a coverage of 400X of the complete genome. A preliminary comparative analyzes of four smut genomes available (Ustilago maydis, Ustilago hordei, Sporisorium reilianum, and Sporisorium scitamineum) provided advances in understanding the particularities of each pathosystem. Through OrthoMCL results, unique genes from each species were detected (459, 762, 259, 438, respectively) using E-value cutoff of 1e-14. Most of these protein-coding genes are hypothetical or related to transposable elements. However, some of them were computationally predicted as secreted effectors and functional analysis via Blast2GO provided insights into the molecular pathways differentiated among these organisms. With these analyzes, good candidates for the specific interaction with their hosts can be selected for validation though functional experiments.