Format: ORAL

Gane Ka-Shu WONG1,2 and Xun XU1

1. BGI-Research, Shenzhen China 2. University of Alberta, Edmonton Canada

Seven years ago at the IBC in Shenzhen, we announced a plan to sequence the genomes of 10,000 phylodiverse plants. Much has changed since those days. The technology of sequencing, especially long reads, has raised the standards for assembly. But the COVID-19 pandemic and growing geopolitical conflicts have made international collaborations increasingly difficult. We have adjusted to these realities and continued to produce data, albeit at a lower rate. Much of the data produced by 10KP have been for algae provided by Michael Melkonian. The most notable discovery, echoed by other publications not affiliated with us, is the ubiquity of horizontal gene transfer. We have identified two mechanisms for the gene transfer, involving phages and DNA viruses, depending on the nature of the donor organism. The mechanisms are not unique to plants and may be shared across eukaryotic evolution, included metazoan evolution. As for land plants, and in particular the angiosperms, long reads will be essential to create the high-quality assemblies that plant scientists rightly demand. To this end, BGI has developed an in-house long reads nanopore sequencing platform. We are adopting this new technology as an alternative to the otherwise more expensive options currently available.