T2T Genome Assembly of Winged Bean Released

T2T Genome Assembly of Winged Bean Released

Excited to announce the release of the first telomere-to-telomere, chromosome-scale genome assembly for winged bean (Psophocarpus tetragonolobus), an underexplored legume with high nutritional value and climate-resilience potential.

1. The high-quality assembly (697.69 Mb; N50 = 85.98 Mb) of cultivar AKWB1 was generated using PacBio HiFi, Illumina, BioNano, and Hi-C technologies, with 98.28% of bases anchored to nine pseudochromosomes.
2. Cytogenetic analysis revealed a diploid karyotype (2n = 18) with exclusively metacentric chromosomes—establishing the first chromosomal ideotype map for this species.
3. Annotation identified 53,745 protein-coding genes, 97.6% BUSCO completeness, and repeat elements comprising ~60% of the genome (dominated by LINEs, LTRs, and DNA transposons).
4. Functional genomics (KEGG and GO) highlight diverse biosynthetic and stress-response pathways.
5. Comparative genomics with nine legumes show conserved chromosomal synteny with Glycine max, no recent whole-genome duplication, and contraction-dominated gene family evolution.
6. Lipid metabolism analysis revealed 750+ genes in 12 KEGG pathways, with chromosomes 2, 3, and 5 showing enrichment of lipid biosynthetic loci—suggesting evolutionary hotspots.
7. This reference genome marks winged bean as a powerful model for research on genome evolution and for engineering legumes toward better oil yield, protein content, and climate adaptation.

Proud that Nucleome Informatics Pvt Ltd took the lead in sequencing and provided critical support for data analysis.

Heartfelt thanks to Dr. Sujay Rakshit, Dr. Kishor Tribhuwan, Dr. Vinay Kumar, all co-authors, and the entire sequencing and analysis team at Nucleome for their outstanding collaboration!

Preprint is available here.