Grapevine genome update and beyond

International audienceThe grapevine is the fourth flowering plant whose genome sequence has been made public by a French-Italian public consortium that carried out the Whole Genome Shotgun 8X sequence of a quasi-homozygous genotype, PN40024. Recently the 12X version of the genome was completed. All data were generated by paired-end sequencing plasmid, fosmid and BAC libraries of different insert sizes, using Sanger technology. Using 11.91X coverage, an assembly of 499 Mb was obtained, composed of 2,888 super-contigs, 91% of which are anchored on linkage groups. The automatic annotation led to an estimate of 26,347 protein coding gene models. The grape genome was shaped by two ancient whole genome duplications that were not followed by extensive rearrangements, thus enabling the discovery of ancestral traits and features of the genetic organization of flowering plants. This sequence allows now to set up powerful integrative approaches for the identification of key genes for important traits in grapevine, to have a whole view of the genomic sequence diversity across the Vitaceae and offers the potential to completely renew the strategies for its breeding