Spirodela Polyrhiza Time Course Project

The Lemnaceae family of monocots are aquatic plants commonly called duckweeds that are endemic in all continents except for Antarctica. While it is an angiosperm, duckweed propagates asexually most of the time and has a reduced body architecture compared to other angiosperms. These characteristics are thought to contribute to its fast growth character, in addition to other cryptic changes in biochemical properties and cell biology that remain to be delineated. More than 1,000 duckweed strains representing the five genera (Spirodela, Lemna, Landoltia, Wolfiella and Wolffia) from all inhabited continents of the world have been maintained for past 60 years, and now are available at the Rutgers Duckweed Stock Cooperative (RDSC; www.ruduckweed.org). Spirodela polyrhiza has the largest body plan of all duckweeds yet has the smallest genome and transcriptome. In this project we sequence the genome and transcriptome using Illumina RNAseq protocols and Oxford Nanopore direct-cDNA sequencing to compare the gene expression over diel cycles.