Ginkgo biloba L. (Ginkgoaceae) is one of the most distinctive plants. It possesses a suite of fascinating characteristics including a large genome, outstanding resistance/tolerance to abiotic and biotic stresses, and dioecious reproduction, making it an ideal model species for biological studies. As Charles Darwin anticipated, living fossils like Ginkgo provide excellent opportunities to study evolutionary questions related to extinction, competition, and adaptation.

Ginkgo has a very large genome size of ~10.6Gb, and a haploid chromosome number of 12. The first draft of ginkgo genome was assembled and published in 2016 in GigaScience. By 2019, Guan et. al. assembled ginkgo genome at chromosome level with HiC technology and obtained high-quality ginkgo genome. By re-sequencing 545 genomes of ginkgo trees sampled from 51 populations around the world, we obtained the largest variation database to date for a non-model plant.

Read more...