The genome and metabolome of the tobacco tree, Nicotiana glauca: a potential renewable feedstock for the bioeconomy

Abstract

BackgroundGiven its tolerance to stress and its richness in particular secondary metabolites, the tobacco tree, Nicotiana glauca, has been considered a promising biorefinery feedstock that would not be competitive with food and fodder crops.ResultsHere we present a 3.5 Gbp draft sequence and annotation of the genome of N. glauca spanning 731,465 scaffold sequences, with an N50 size of approximately 92 kbases. Furthermore, we supply a comprehensive transcriptome and metabolome analysis of leaf development comprising multiple techniques and platforms.The genome sequence is predicted to cover nearly 80% of the estimated total genome size of N. glauca. With 73,799 genes predicted and a BUSCO score of 94.9%, we have assembled the majority of gene-rich regions successfully. RNA-Seq data revealed stage-and/or tissue-specific expression of genes, and we determined a general trend of a decrease of tricarboxylic acid cycle metabolites and an increase of terpenoids as well as some of their corresponding transcripts during leaf development.ConclusionThe N. glauca draft genome and its detailed transcriptome, together with paired metabolite data, constitute a resource for future studies of valuable compound analysis in tobacco species and present the first steps towards a further resolution of phylogenetic, whole genome studies in tobacco.

Genetic dissection of seed characteristics in field pennycress via genome‐wide association mapping studies

“…Dewey; Kantarski et al., 2017], silphium ( Silphium integrifolium Michx. ; Tassel et al., 2017), tree tobacco ( Nicotiana glauca Graham; Usade et al., 2018), and wild tomato ( Solanum pimpinellifolium Jusl. ; Zsögön et al., 2018).…”

A multi-omicNicotiana benthamianaresource for fundamental research and biotechnology

“…Almost all species in this section are indigenous to Australasia, which they apparently colonized during the Pliocene transition ~5-6 MYA. The diploid ancestors of N. benthamiana most likely belonged to the Sylvestres and Noctiflorae sections, whose closest sequenced extant relatives are N. sylvestris (~2.6Gb) and N. glauca (~3.2Gb) [6][7][8][9][10][11] .N. benthamiana is the most important plant platform for biopharmaceutical protein and vaccine production 7,12 and has been instrumental for fundamental discoveries in RNA interference, plantpathogen interactions, metabolic pathway engineering, functional genomics, synthetic biology and gene editing 13 .…”

“…Almost all species in this section are indigenous to Australasia, which they apparently colonized during the Pliocene transition ~5-6 MYA. The diploid ancestors of N. benthamiana most likely belonged to the Sylvestres and Noctiflorae sections, whose closest sequenced extant relatives are N. sylvestris (~2.6Gb) and N. glauca (~3.2Gb) [6][7][8][9][10][11] .…”

The Biosynthesis of Non-Endogenous Apocarotenoids in Transgenic Nicotiana glauca

“…N. glauca had been used previously as a platform to produce ketocarotenoids [ 26 ], taking advantage of its highly pigmented petals that mainly accumulate lutein. In addition, N. glauca grows in arid environments [ 27 ], is usually not suitable for food crops, and has immense potential as a biofuel stock due to its exceptionally high content of hydrocarbons in the leaves [ 28 , 29 ]. Previously, we had used N. glauca to produce crocins constitutively expressing CsCCD2L , the gene encoding for the enzyme responsible for crocin biosynthesis in saffron [ 22 , 30 ].…”