Dodders (Cuscuta spp.) are worldwide distributed parasitic plant. The genus Cuscuta is the only lineage of parasitic plants in Convolvulaceae. Dodders are typical stem parasites (namely, they parasitize the stems of host plants) with a broad range of host plants. Many holoparasites (do not or have very little photosynthesis activity) have dramatic morphological changes. Dodders are leaf- and rootless holoparasites, containing very little or no chlorophyll.

Cuscuta australis is diploid with a small genome size (~ 272 Mb). Recently, the Jianqiang Wu lab (www.wu-lab.org) at the Kunming Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, sequenced the genome of C. australis using the PacBio SMRT platform. In total, 264.83 Mb (219 contigs) of nuclear sequences (97.16% of the estimated genome size) and 1.9 Mb (30 contigs) of organellar sequences were acquired.

This Dodderbase website provides the genome assembly and gene models of C. australis, and everyone can freely download these data. These data and the sequence reads can also be accessed under the BioPorject PRJNA394036 at the NCBI.

For further inquires and requests, please contact Dr. Jianqiang Wu (wujianqiang(at)mail.kib.ac.cn; note: please replace (at) with @).

What's New in Dodderbase

Cuscuta australis genome was released on April 25, 2018.