Toward a Better Understanding of Plant Genomes Structure: Combining NGS and Optical Mapping Technology to Improve the Sunflower Assembly

Agricultural research must deal with major issues on various scales, in the context of the climate change, the population growth, the need to face limited energy resources. In this context, better understanding how plants evolve and adapt is a major goal. Increasing plant genomes knowledge is essential to tackle the various scientific questions that arise from that. Despite the revolution of the Next Generation Sequencing technologies including the technologies allowing long reads, the study of plant genomes remains challenging due to their high complexity: size, polyploidy and the high percentage of repetitive elements. In order to have a better understanding of complex genomes the CNRGV has invested in an Irys Instrument form BioNano Genomics. This technology allows the rapid construction of physical whole genome maps which are very helpful for genome assembly of complex genomes and comparison of structural variation in different genotypes. We’ll present the improvement of the Sunflower genome assembly using hybrid scaffolding combining PacBio sequencing and Bionano Genomics mapping data.