Long-Read Genome Sequence Resources of Xanthomonas citri pv. punicae Strain Bagalkot Causing Pomegranate Bacterial Blight

Xanthomonas citri pv. punicae causing bacterial blight is a devastating disease of pome-granate in India and Pakistan. Most xanthomonads use the type III secretion system to inject transcription activator-like effector (TALE) proteins into the host cell. TALEs bind to the effector-binding elements in the promoter of host susceptibility genes, triggering dis-ease development. PacBio single-molecule real-time long-read sequencing technology was used to identify the TALE-encoding genes, which is otherwise not possible using next-generation short-read sequencers. In all, 1.74 Gb of raw data containing 368,980 subreads, with an average read length of 4,724 bp and longest read length of 77,471, were generated. Subreads were assembled into 15 scaffolds generating approximately 5.4 Mb (348x) of genome. X. citri pv. punicae exhibited close lineage with X. citri pv. citri with 98.78% average nucleotide identity. Of the 4,263 protein-coding genes, 11 non-TALE type III effectors and 2 TALE-encoding genes were identified.

Automated summary

This study successfully identified the TALE-encoding genes of Xanthomonas citri pv. punicae using PacBio single-molecule real-time long-read sequencing technology. The pathogen exhibited a close lineage with Xanthomonas citri pv. citri, and a total of 11 non-TALE type III effectors and 2 TALE-encoding genes were identified.