Sacred lotus is a basal eudicot with agricultural, medicinal, cultural, and religious importance. It was domesticated in Asia about 7,000 years ago, and cultivated for its rhizomes and seeds as a food crop. It is particularly noted for its 1,300-year seed longevity and exceptional water repellency, known as the lotus effect. The latter property is due to the nanoscopic closely-packed protuberances of its self-cleaning leaf surface, which have been adapted for the manufacture of a self-cleaning industrial paint, Lotusan.

Scientists form Wuhan Botanical Garden, United States and Australia reported the sequencing and analysis of the sacred lotus genome from the most ancient lineage of angiosperm. The genome of the China Antique variety of the sacred lotus was sequenced with Illumina and 454 technologies, at respective depths of 101x and 5.2x. The final assembly had a contig N50 of 38.8 kbp and a scaffold N50 of 3.4 Mbp, and covered 86.5% of the estimated 929 Mbp total genome size. The genome notably lacked the paleo-triplication observed in other eudicots, but revealed a lineage-specific duplication. The genome had evidence of slow evolution, with a 30% slower nucleotide mutation rate than observed in grape. Comparisons of the available sequenced genomes suggested a minimum gene set for vascular plants of 4,223 genes. Strikingly, the sacred lotus had sixteen COG2132 multicopper oxidase family proteins with root specific expression; these were involved in root meristem phosphate starvation, reflecting adaptation to limited nutrient availability in an aquatic environment.

The study of lotus genome provided the foundation for revealing the molecular basis of its many distinguishing biological properties, including seed longevity, adaptation to aquatic environment, the distinctive superhydrophobicity and self – cleaning property of its leaves, and the thermogenesis that is thought to enhance its pollination success.

This project was supported by the University of California, Los Angeles; Wuhan Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences, P.R. China; and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Relevant results were published in Genome Biology entitled “Genome of the long-living sacred lotus (Nelumbo nucifera Gaertn.)”.

Article link: http://genomebiology.com/2013/14/5/R41/abstract 

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