Sequencing the gigabase plant genome of the wild tomato species Solanum pennellii using Oxford Nanopore single molecule sequencing

Recent updates in Oxford Nanopore technology (R9.4) have made it possible to obtain GBases of sequence data from a single flowcell. However, unlike other next generation sequencing technology, Oxford nanopore based sequencing doesn’t require any a priori capital investments. We therefore evaluated whether Oxford nanopore can be used to analyze plant genomes. To this aim, we sequenced and are assembling an accession of the wild tomato species Solanum pennellii. This accession was identified spuriously as an tomato accessions. Unlike the frequently used Solanum pennelii LA716 accession, for which we have previously generated a high quality draft genome, this new accession does not appear to exhibit any dwarfed, necrotic leaf phenotype when introgressed into modern tomato cultivars.