Asparagus officinalis Genome sequencing

We performed Illumina HiSeq2000 sequencing of both male and female asparagus genomes to study its genome composition, especially with respect to tranposable elements (TEs), which make up the majority of the gneome. Asparagus officinalis is an economically and nutritionally important vegetable crop which is widely cultivated and serves as a model dioecious species to study plant sex determination and sex chromosome evolution. This research greatly improves our knowledge of repetitive sequence construction of asparagus, which will facilitate the identification of TEs responsible for the early evolution plant sex chromosomes and will be helpful for further study of this dioecious plant.