Introduction
Carnivorous plants derive nutrients from catching and digesting small animals, such as insects and other arthropods. This adaptation allows them to grow in nutrient-poor soils. Strikingly, plant carnivory has at least 11 independent evolutionary origins spread across distantly related genera (Fleischmann et al. 2018; Lin et al. 2021), making them and their genomes useful models for the study of convergent evolution.
Here, we provide genome sequences of carnivorous plants from three different plant orders representing three different evolutionary trajectories to carnivory (Fleischmann et al. 2018). These include trumpet pitcher plants of the order Ericales (including members of each of the genera Darlingtonia, Sarracenia and Heliamphora); butterworts (genus Pinguicula) of the order Lamiales; and notable species of the order Caryophyllales, including a species of tropical pitcher plant of the Nepenthes genus, sundews of the genus Drosera, and the Venus flytrap (Dionaea muscipula). The modified leaves of these species represent diverse prey-trapping mechanisms, including adhesive, pitfall and snap traps. In addition to previously published carnivorous plant genomes (for example, Palfalvi et al. 2020; and Gao et al. 2023), these sequences provide a resource to the community to better understand the evolution of these most unusual and charismatic plants.
Methods
DNA extraction was performed using the Qiagen DNAeasy genomic extraction kit using the standard protocol. A paired-end sequencing library was constructed for each specimen using the Illumina TruSeq kit according to the manufacturer’s instructions. The libraries were sequenced on an Illumina Hi-Seq platform in paired-end, 2 × 150 bp format. The resulting fastq files were trimmed of adapter/primer sequence and low-quality regions with Trimmomatic v0.33 (Bolger, Lohse, and Usadel 2014). The trimmed sequence was assembled by SPAdes v2.5 (Bankevich et al. 2012) followed by a finishing step using Zanfona (Kieras, O’Neill, and Pirro 2021).
Results and Data Availability
All data, including raw reads and assembled genome sequence, is available via Genbank.
Funding
Funding for genome sequencing was provided by Iridian Genomes, grant# IRGEN_RG_2021-1345 Genomic Studies of Eukaryotic Taxa. This work was further supported by National Institutes of Health award 5R35GM122604 (J.C.) and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (J.C.).