Genetic Determinants of Flax Genome Integrity

Recent advances in high-throughput sequencing have enabled the development of a novel approach to the evaluation of genome stability and integrity. The depth of the coverage signal at a particular genome location may point to DNA integrity loss in the region. In this work, the previously developed metric of local genomic integrity, which estimates the uniformity of the coverage signal, has been transformed to a quantitative trait, and genetic variants associated with coverage signal uniformity in the flax genome have been sought. Quantitative Trait Loci ( x QTLs; where x is the designation of an arbitrary quantitative parameter associated with a particular genome region, for example, the levels of gene expression, the degree of coverage by ribosomes, etc.) have been analyzed to identify genomic regions that most likely contribute to the loss of genomic integrity and may be involved in the maintenance of genome stability. The analysis invokes information on the whole-genome sequence assembly of 100 flax samples and enables the identification of genes presumably implicated in maintenance of genomic integrity in flax and, possibly, in plants in general. It also reveals novel processes associated with the maintenance of genomic integrity.