IWGSC whole genome shotgun sequencing of Chinese Spring: Towards a Reference Sequence of Wheat

Wheat is one of the world’s most important food crops and provides >20% of the protein and calories for the world’s population, but it is the only major crop that lacks an ordered genome sequence.  The lack of a reference sequence has slowed identification of genes underlying phenotypic expression of agriculturally important traits.  The IWGSC has followed an approach to develop separate physical maps, draft sequences, and high quality sequencing of the Minimum Tiling Paths (MTP) of mapped BAC clones for each chromosome to accelerate the completion of the gold standard reference sequence.  Recent innovations in Illumina sequencing technology and NRGene’s computational genomics have enabled the IWGSC to produce rapidly a whole genome shotgun sequence of the "Chinese Spring" hexaploid wheat genome to complement ongoing BAC-based sequencing strategies. We assembled Illumina generated short reads using NRGene’s DeNovoMAGICTM2.0 assembler to span 14.6 Gb of the 17 Gb genome. We are currently validating and anchoring the assembly using IWGSC resource.  We will present our results and discuss utilization of this new resource as an additional tool to complete the reference sequence for all 21 wheat chromosomes.