Frontiers in Plant Science (Jun 2024)

Evidence-based unification of potato gene models with the UniTato collaborative genome browser

  • Maja Zagorščak,
  • Jan Zrimec,
  • Carissa Bleker,
  • Nadja Nolte,
  • Mojca Juteršek,
  • Živa Ramšak,
  • Kristina Gruden,
  • Marko Petek

DOI
https://doi.org/10.3389/fpls.2024.1352253
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 15

Abstract

Read online

Potato (Solanum tuberosum) is the most popular tuber crop and a model organism. A variety of gene models for potato exist, and despite frequent updates, they are not unified. This hinders the comparison of gene models across versions, limits the ability to reuse experimental data without significant re-analysis, and leads to missing or wrongly annotated genes. Here, we unify the recent potato double monoploid v4 and v6 gene models by developing an automated merging protocol, resulting in a Unified poTato genome model (UniTato). We subsequently established an Apollo genome browser (unitato.nib.si) that enables public access to UniTato and further community-based curation. We demonstrate how the UniTato resource can help resolve problems with missing or misplaced genes and can be used to update or consolidate a wider set of gene models or genome information. The automated protocol, genome annotation files, and a comprehensive translation table are provided at github.com/NIB-SI/unitato.

Keywords