Watermelon, Citrullus lanatus, is an important cucurbit crop grown throughout the world. Here we report a high-quality draft genome sequence of the east Asia watermelon cultivar 97103 (2n = 2x = 22) containing 23,440 predicted protein-coding genes. Comparative genomics analysis provided an evolutionary scenario for the origin of the 11 watermelon chromosomes derived from a 7-chromosome paleohexaploid eudicot ancestor. Resequencing of 20 watermelon accessions representing three different C. lanatus subspecies produced numerous haplotypes and identified the extent of genetic diversity and population structure of watermelon germplasm. Genomic regions that were preferentially selected during domestication were identified. Many disease-resistance genes were also found to be lost during domestication. In addition, integrative genomic and transcriptomic analyses yielded important insights into aspects of phloem-based vascular signaling in common between watermelon and cucumber and identified genes crucial to valuable fruit-quality traits, including sugar accumulation and citrulline metabolism

Meiotic recombination creates genetic diversity and ensures segregation of homologous chromosomes. Previous population analyses yielded results averaged among individuals and impacted by evolutionary pressures. Here we sequenced 99 sperm from an Asian male using the newly developed amplification method—Multiple Annealing and Looping-Based Amplification Cycles (MALBAC)—to phase the personal genome and map at high resolution recombination events, which are non-uniformly distributed across the genome in the absence of selection pressure. The paucity of recombination near transcription start sites observed in individual sperm indicates such a phenomenon is intrinsic to the molecular mechanism of meiosis. Interestingly, a decreased crossover frequency in companion with an increase of autosomal aneuploidy is observable on a global per-sperm basis.

Since the completion of the cucumber and panda genome projects using Illumina sequencing in 2009, the global scientific community has had to pay much more attention to this new cost-effective approach to generate the draft sequence of large genomes. To allow new users to more easily understand the assembly algorithms and the optimum software packages for their projects, we make a detailed comparison of the two major classes of assembly algorithms: overlap-layout-consensus and de-bruijn-graph, from how they match the Lander-Waterman model, to the required sequencing depth and reads length. We also discuss the computational efficiency of each class of algorithm, the influence of repeats and heterozygosity and points of note in the subsequent scaffold linkage and gap closure steps. We hope this review can help further promote the application of second-generation de novo sequencing, as well as aid the future development of assembly algorithms.

pIRS is written in C++ and Perl, and is freely available at ftp://ftp.genomics.org.cn/pub/pIRS/.