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A telomere-to-telomere reference genome assembly of the red silk cotton tree (Bombax ceiba).

Guofang Yuan·Yong Gao·Lizhou Tang·Jianchu Xu·Aizhong Liu·Bin Tian·Anmin Yu
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Abstract

Bombax ceiba, an important ornamental tree and potential fiber resource in the textile industry, is widely distributed in tropical and subtropical regions. In this study, we assembled a nearly gap-free telomere-to-telomere (T2T) genome of B. ceiba using Illumina, PacBio High-fidelity (HiFi), ONT ultra-long, and Hi-C sequencing technologies. The genome spanned approximately 807.89 Mb, with a scaffold N50 of 16.58 Mb, and 754.68 Mb (93.41%) of genomic sequences were anchored onto 48 pseudo-chromosomes. Benchmarking Universal Single-Copy Orthologs (BUSCO) analysis revealed a completeness of 99.40%, identifying 1,378 single-copy and 213 duplicated genes out of 1,614. The genome contained 67.72% (547.11 Mb) repeat regions, with 39,708 predicted protein-coding genes. Collectively, our study provides valuable genomic data for investigating the evolutionary history of the Malvaceae family.

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Genome, PlantTelomereMalvaceaeJournal ArticleDatasetResearch Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

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Guofang Yuan, Yong Gao, Lizhou Tang, Jianchu Xu, Aizhong Liu, Bin Tian, Anmin Yu. 2025-07-16. A telomere-to-telomere reference genome assembly of the red silk cotton tree (Bombax ceiba).. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-025-05606-4

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