A Comprehensive Database for Empowering Living Fossil Conservation
Taxonomy: Pinopsida > Ginkgoidae > Ginkgoales > Ginkgoaceae
Ginkgo, or the maidenhair tree (Ginkgo biloba L.) is one of the best-known and most distinctive deciduous trees, native to China, with medicinal and horticultural importance. Ginkgo is also a popular street and park tree since its beautiful yellow leaf in autumn, usefulness as a shade tree, and outstanding resistance to abiotic and biotic stresses.
Ginkgo is a living fossil that has remained essentially unchanged in terms of gross morphology for more than 200 million years. With no living relatives, ginkgo represents one of the four gymnosperm lineages (Ginkgoidae, Cycadidae, Pinidae and Gnetidae). Its special phylogenetic position, early diverged lineage and recent origin of sex-determination system make it an ideal model species for biological studies.
As the only extant species of Ginkgoales, ginkgo has survived glaciations as a relic followed by a human-aided global redistribution, and thus provides an inspiring example of how humans can help a species survive and renew.
Our laboratory has studied evolutionary ecology of relict tree species Ginkgo biloba for decades.
The 10.61 Gb ginkgo genome sequence containing 41,840 annotated genes was assembled and published in GigaScience in 2016 . By 2019, re-sequencing 545 genomes of ginkgo trees sampled from 51 populations around the world produced the largest variation database to date for this non-model plant. The artical was published in Nature Communications .
Integrating the available multiomics data of ginkgo, we released Ginkgo Genome Database. The genome, annotation and varitation data are available here, and analysis service like BLAST, Premer3 is provided.
As a successful case of restoration and redistribution of endangered plants after artificial intervention, ginkgo is now widespread in six continents.
According to long-term accumulated records by our research group and some ginkgo related publications, Ginkgo Occurrence Database is constructed and refined to each individual. More than 8,000 individuals with detailed informations have been recorded in the database, some of which will be monitored regularly.
Moreover, desensitization data from Xingse, a plant recognition APP, with over 1,000,000 records, is going to be included in our database, and is expected to provide a more complete distribution patten.
Hundreds of photos for ginkgo trees, leaves or cones have been collected in Ginkgo Gallery. Our ambition is to take pictures for each old ginkgo trees recorded in our database. In addition, photos or scanning images of some ginkgo specimens and biological materials were also be posted on the web.
Researchers who wish to use GinkgoDB are encouraged to refer to our publication or specific data sources :
Kai-Jie Gu, Chen-Feng Lin, Jun-Jie Wu, Yun-Peng Zhao* (2022) GinkgoDB: an ecological genome database for the living fossil, Ginkgo biloba. Database 2022, baac046
doi: 10.1093/database/baac046