Gene models for Populus nigra var italica

The current gene model prediction generated as part of the ongoing project P. nigra cv. ‘italica’ reference genome project (ENA: PRJEB44889, short descriptions are available of these annotations files with their available versions) was improved by combining illumina short reads and nanopore isoseq long reads from transcriptome libraries of three replicates using PASA (Program to Assemble Spliced Alignments) (Haas et al., 2003). This tool exploits spliced alignments of expressed transcript sequences to automatically create model gene structures, identifying and classifying all splicing variations supported by the transcript alignments obtained.