Tea is a popular and natural non-alcoholic beverage, and is produced from fresh leaves of Camellia sinensis. Tea leaves contain many bioactive compounds that have significant health benefits. We constructed a high quality bacterial artificial chromosome (BAC) library by using the fresh petals of C. sinensis ‘Shuchazao’ for genome sequencing and improvement of genomic assembly.. BAC sequences of tea plant BAC library

Tea is a popular and natural non-alcoholic beverage, and is produced from fresh leaves of Camellia sinensis. Tea leaves contain many bioactive compounds that have significant health benefits. We constructed a high quality bacterial artificial chromosome (BAC) library by using the fresh petals of C. sinensis ‘Shuchazao’ for genome sequencing and improvement of genomic assembly. BAC library is still a significant tool for studies of functional genomes and preservation of precious genetic resources. The BAC library contains 161,280 clones with an average insert size of 113 kb, which represents approximately 6.2-fold coverage of haploid genome equivalents of C. sinensis. We characterized 20 complete BAC clones and 738 BAC end sequences (BESs) ranging from 105 to 917 bp. In addition, we predicted cis-regulatory elements of LAR (leucoanthocyanidin reductase), TCS (caffeine synthase) and TS (theanine synthetase) involved in tea characteristic metabolite synthesis and identified a larger number of light-responsive cis-acting elements in the these three genes. Meanwhile, we analyzed alternative splicing of these three genes. Furthermore, 12 pairs of SSR primers were successfully amplified in tea plant DNA. The tea BAC library was a critical resource to accomplish de novo whole genome sequencing, accelerate gene discovery and enhance molecular breeding of C. sinensis.