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Genome and transcriptome of the regeneration-competent flatworm, Macrostomum lignano.


Type

Article

Change log

Authors

Wasik, Kaja 
Gurtowski, James 
Zhou, Xin 
Ramos, Olivia Mendivil 
Delás, M Joaquina 

Abstract

The free-living flatworm, Macrostomum lignano has an impressive regenerative capacity. Following injury, it can regenerate almost an entirely new organism because of the presence of an abundant somatic stem cell population, the neoblasts. This set of unique properties makes many flatworms attractive organisms for studying the evolution of pathways involved in tissue self-renewal, cell-fate specification, and regeneration. The use of these organisms as models, however, is hampered by the lack of a well-assembled and annotated genome sequences, fundamental to modern genetic and molecular studies. Here we report the genomic sequence of M. lignano and an accompanying characterization of its transcriptome. The genome structure of M. lignano is remarkably complex, with ∼75% of its sequence being comprised of simple repeats and transposon sequences. This has made high-quality assembly from Illumina reads alone impossible (N50=222 bp). We therefore generated 130× coverage by long sequencing reads from the Pacific Biosciences platform to create a substantially improved assembly with an N50 of 64 Kbp. We complemented the reference genome with an assembled and annotated transcriptome, and used both of these datasets in combination to probe gene-expression patterns during regeneration, examining pathways important to stem cell function.

Description

Keywords

Macrostomum, flatworm, genome, neoblast, regeneration, Animals, Base Sequence, Cluster Analysis, Gene Expression Profiling, Gene Ontology, Genes, Helminth, Genome, Helminth, Helminth Proteins, Molecular Sequence Data, Phylogeny, Platyhelminths, Regeneration, Sequence Homology, Nucleic Acid, Stem Cells, Transcriptome

Journal Title

Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A

Conference Name

Journal ISSN

0027-8424
1091-6490

Volume Title

112

Publisher

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Sponsorship
Cancer Research UK (21143)
This work is supported by National Institutes of Health Grants R37 GM062534 (to G.J.H.) and R01-HG006677 (to M.S.); National Science Foundation Grant DBI-1350041 (to M.S.); and a Swiss National Science Foundation Grant 31003A-143732 (to L.S.). This work was performed with assistance from Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Shared Resources, which are funded, in part, by Cancer Center Support Grant 5P30CA045508.