De novo annotation reveals transcriptomic complexity across the hexaploid wheat pan-genome
2025.10.08
Wheat is the most widely cultivated crop in the world, with over 215 million hectares grown annually. The 10+ Wheat Genomes Project recently sequenced and assembled to chromosome-level the genomes of nine wheat cultivars, uncovering genetic diversity and selection within the pan-genome of wheat. Here, we provide a wheat pan-transcriptome with de novo annotation and differential expression analysis for these wheat cultivars across multiple tissues. Using the de novo annotations we identify cultivar-specific genes and define the core and dispensable genomes. Expression analysis across cultivars and tissues reveals conservation in expression between a large core set of homeologous genes, in addition to widespread changes in subgenome homeolog expression bias between cultivars and cultivar-specific expression profiles. We utilise both the newly constructed gene-based wheat pan-genome and pan-transcriptome, demonstrating variation in the prolamin superfamily and immune-reactive proteins across cultivars.
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Kentaro K. Shimizu
Visiting Professor
Kihara Institute for Biological Research, Yokohama City University, Yokohama, Japan
Department of Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
Visiting Professor
Kihara Institute for Biological Research, Yokohama City University, Yokohama, Japan
Department of Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland