Genome structure of the legume, Lotus japonicus

Shusei Sato, Yasukazu Nakamura, Takakazu Kaneko, Erika Asamizu, Tomohiko Kato, Mitsuteru Nakao, Shigemi Sasamoto, Akiko Watanabe, Akiko Ono, Kumiko Kawashima, Tsunakazu Fujishiro, Midori Katoh, Mitsuyo Kohara, Yoshie Kishida, Chiharu Minami, Shinobu Nakayama, Naomi Nakazaki, Yoshimi Shimizu, Sayaka Shinpo, Chika Takahashi, Tsuyuko Wada, Manabu Yamada, Nobuko Ohmido, Makoto Hayashi, Kiichi Fukui, Tomoya Baba, Tomoko Nakamichi, Hirotada Mori, Satoshi Tabata, Genome Structure of the Legume, Lotus japonicus, DNA Research, Volume 15, Issue 4, August 2008, Pages 227–239, https://doi.org/10.1093/dnares/dsn008
The legume Lotus japonicus has been widely used as a model system to investigate the genetic background of legume-specific phenomena such as symbiotic nitrogen fixation. Here, we report structural features of the L japonicus genome. The 315.1-Mb sequences determined in this and previous studies correspond to 67% of the genome (472 Mb), and are likely to cover 91.3% of the gene space. Linkage mapping anchored 130-Mb sequences onto the six linkage groups. A total of 10 951 complete and 19 848 partial structures of protein-encoding genes were assigned to the genome. Comparative analysis of these genes revealed the expansion of several functional domains and gene families that are characteristic of L japonicus. Synteny analysis detected traces of whole-genome duplication and the presence of synteny blocks with other plant genomes to various degrees. This study provides the first opportunity to look into the complex and unique genetic system of legumes.