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BACKGROUND: Genomic sequence assemblies are key tools for a broad range of gene function and evolutionary studies. The diploid amphibian Xenopus tropicalis plays a pivotal role in these fields due to its combination of experimental flexibility, diploid genome, and early-branching tetrapod taxonomic position, having diverged from the amniote lineage ~360 million years ago. A genome assembly and a genetic linkage map have recently been made available. Unfortunately, large gaps in the linkage map attenuate long-range integrity of the genome assembly.
RESULTS: We laser dissected the short arm of X. tropicalis chromosome 7 for next generation sequencing and computational mapping to the reference genome. This arm is of particular interest as it encodes the sex determination locus, but its genetic map contains large gaps which undermine available genome assemblies. Whole genome amplification of 15 laser-microdissected 7p arms followed by next generation sequencing yielded ~35 million reads, over four million of which uniquely mapped to the X. tropicalis genome. Our analysis placed more than 200 previously unmapped scaffolds on the analyzed chromosome arm, providing valuable low-resolution physical map information for de novo genome assembly.
CONCLUSION: We present a new approach for improving and validating genetic maps and sequence assemblies. Whole genome amplification of 15 microdissected chromosome arms provided sufficient high-quality material for localizing previously unmapped scaffolds and genes as well as recognizing mislocalized scaffolds.
Figure 1. Chromosome dissection and sequencing workflow. (A) Dissociated Xenopus tropicalis froglet testes were cultured in colchicine, and 15 Chromosome 7 short arms were laser-dissected, collected and (B) amplified using Sigma WGA3/WGA4 systems. (C) Sequencing libraries were prepared by Nextera transposome-mediated simultaneous fragmentation and adaptor ligation to minimize resequencing WGA adaptors, and (D) sequenced on an Illumina GAII. (E) The resulting reads were trimmed and mapped to X. tropicalis genome assemblies v4.1 and v7.1 using Bowtie, visualized on scaffolds/chromosomes, and selected positions were validated by FISH-TSA. 1- Centromere, 2- secondary constriction.
Figure 2. Uniquely-localized read distribution on physically mapped scaffolds. Schematic of X. tropicalis karyotype showing genes mapped by FISH-TSA [8,10,20] and cognate v4.1 scaffolds (scaff_number). High read density (17�80 hits/kb) is seen for scaffolds localized to the microdissected region (red region). Genes that physically localized to non-7p regions were all contained by scaffolds with <1 hit/kb (black regions).
Figure 3. FISH-TSA analysis of three hybrid scaffolds. Selected genes from read-rich and read-absent areas of v4.1 scaffolds_75, _266, and _270 were physically mapped to X. tropicalis chromosomes using specific cDNA probes. Top line shows probe gene location on scaffold, second line shows distribution of uniquely-mapping reads, third line shows distribution of repetitive sequence (similar in hit-rich and hit-absent areas).
Figure 4. Sequence of dissected chromosome arm identifies misassembled regions. Pileup of uniquely-mapping reads from dissected chromosome 7p on X. tropicalis v7.1 assembly superscaffolds/chromosomes 2 (top), 3 (middle), and 7 (bottom). Reads mapping uniquely to typical non-7p regions exemplified by chromosomes 2 and 3 are rare, with the exception of a misassembled region at 37â38 Mb on chromosome 3. Most of the short arm (left side) of chromosome 7 is heavily decorated by reads, but gaps to the left of centromere (arrow) and read-dense regions to the right identify misassembled regions.
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