2023-09-13 14:36:23
The grapevine genome, the first from a fruit crop, was presented in 2007 by a French-Italian team. The results revealed that the vine (Wine vine, that of the Pinot noir grape) contains more than twice as many genes involved in the production of aromas and essential oils than other plants. However, this sequencing and those that followed still left many unknown regions.
Now, an international investigation in which the Institute of Integrative Systems Biology (I2SysBio)a joint center of the Higher Council for Scientific Research (CSIC) and the University of Valencia, has managed to complete versions 4 and 5 of that genome, in which a large number of genes related to the response to pest stress are found, for the lack of water or genes determining the aromatic capacity of the fruits.
The vineyard of the future
According to the researchers, the information obtained will make it possible to design the vineyard of the future that is more resistant to climate change that seriously threatens the wine industry. These works have been published in magazines ‘Horticulture Research’ y ‘G3 Genes|Genomes|Genetics’.
Many of these genome fragments, which have now been correctly assembled, correspond to centromeric and telomeric regions (that is, the center and ends of the chromosomes), which were made up of a considerable number of repetitions that made them difficult to read, which is why for which they were not present in previous versions of the genome.
As the researchers explain, having the best version of a genome opens the doors to knowing 100% of the genes of a species. Now, thanks to this research, the function of all of them can be studied and it can be associated with characters of interest to the wine industry, through the use of computational biology tools. In this sense, genetic improvement, through traditional methods (breeding), will also be favored.
Version 4 of the genome showed the pedigree of the cultivar used called PN40024. Initially it was believed that it corresponded to the Pinot Noir variety, crossed nine times by inbreeding, but subsequent genomic analysis showed that it was actually the Helfnsteiner variety (a cross between Pinot Noir and Schiava Grossa). This version also made it possible to generate a highly valued resource: an annotation of all the genes in the genome manually curated by members of the scientific community. “With version 5 of the genome, we can say today that we have the complete sequence of the grapevine genome,” says the CSIC in a statement.
The technology used is based on long-fragment sequencing (long read sequencing). This is a DNA sequencing technique that allows much longer DNA fragments to be sequenced than traditional short-read sequencing methods. While version 4 uses PacBio’s standard long sequence technology, version 5 uses HIFi or high fidelity technology. HiFi reads are produced using circular consensus sequencing mode on PacBio long read systems. High-fidelity readouts provide high resolution with a single-molecule readout accuracy of 99.9%.
The two scientific works have been developed within the framework of the Cost Grapedia project, a federative database proposed as an open access platform aimed at addressing challenges in the access and use of genetic data related to the vine.
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