Sequencing, annotation, and characterization of the bread wheat chromosome 3B. 3BSEQ

In order to assemble a high quality reference sequence of the 1 Gb wheat chromosome 3B, we sequenced 8452 BACs comprising the Minimal Tiling Path of the 3B physical map using Roche/454 8 kb long paired-end reads. In addition, RNASeq data were produced for 15 different conditions to help in gene modeling and for expression analyses. Bioinformatics tools were developed to integrate physical contig information with sequencing data. This has led to assemble 2808 scaffolds covering the whole chromosome for a cumulated size of 833 Mb. A pseudomolecule made of 1358 scaffolds representing 774 Mb was constructed by ordering scaffolds through the integration of genotyping data of mapping populations. Gene modeling and accurate annotation of transposable elements that represent 85% of the sequence led to get better insight into the structure, function and evolution of the wheat genome.