Characterization of Repetitive DNA Sequences in Iraqi Gerbera jamesonii

Abstract

The genome of the Transvaal daisy (Gerbera Jamesonii) contains several transposable elements, including long-term repeat retrotransposons. Nevertheless, little is known about the species-specific variability linked to retrotransposons. The study aimed to conduct a comprehensive analysis of the retrotransposon section of the Iraqi Gerbera jamesonii's genome in terms of quantity and quality of intraspecific variation relying on next-generation sequencing (NGS) technologies. Iraqi Gerbera jamesonii's genome was commercially sequenced using Illumina Novaseq6000 reads by DNA LINK Co. in Korea. The data have been utilized to recognize the tandem repeat clusters within the genome sequences using Geneious Prime software and the Repeat Explorer platform. Iraqi Gerbera jamesonii genome of 78485920 input reads of the random sample comprised approximately 80-82% repetitive elements, providing a total coverage of 2.37X. Out of 3928601 reads, 3209438, representing 72% of the genome, were clustered in 243 clusters. The majority of the top clusters were unannotated by Repeat Explorer. It was concluded that the annotated cluster proportion was 8.6124 of the LTR-RTs of Gypsy (2.4561) and Copia (6.1563).