Format: ORAL

Alex D. Twyford1,2, Peter M. Hollingworth2, Darwin Tree of Life Consortium, Claudia Martin1, Robin Burns3, Ian Henderson3, Max Carter-Brown4, Andrew Leitch5, Alex Bousios6, Hans-Wilhelm Ntzmann7, Ilia Leitch8

1 University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh UK. 2 Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, Edinburgh UK. 3 University of Cambridge, Cambridge UK. 4 Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge UK. 5 Queen Mary University of London, London UK. 6 University of Sussex, Sussex UK. 7 University of Exeter, Devon UK. 8 Royal Botanic Garden Kew, London UK.

The field of evolutionary genomics is at a turning point, where many unresolved questions can now be addressed using high quality reference genomes for non-model species. The Darwin Tree of Life (DToL) project aims to sequence all eukaryotic genomes in Britain and Ireland, and has recently hit the milestone of generating 1,000 reference genomes including over 50 plants. I show how these plant genomes can be integrated with the wealth of knowledge on the diversity of the British flora to investigate evolutionary processes. Comparative genomic analyses reveal the wide range of plant genomic diversity, shaped by various attributes such as mating system and extent of natural hybridisation. A deep dive into the genome of the European mistletoe (Viscum album), the largest genome ever sequenced (90Gb), reveal its giant genome size has been achieved via extensive repeat proliferation and degradation rather than recurrent polyploidy. Future large-scale floristic analyses promise to combine the benefits of broad-scale analyses of diverse species, with the precision to infer evolutionary process from whole genome sequence data.