Heiner Kuhl

Leibniz-Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries | IGB

Presumably, due to a rapid early diversification, major parts of the higher-level phylogeny of birds are still resolved controversially in different analyses or are considered unresolvable. To address this problem, we produced an avian tree of life, which includes molecular sequences of one or several species of ∼ 90% of the currently recognized fa...

Understanding genome evolution of polyploids requires dissection of their often highly similar subgenomes and haplotypes. Polyploid animal genome assemblies so far restricted homo-logous chromosomes to a 'collapsed' representation. Here, we sequenced the genome of the asexual Prussian carp, which is a close relative of the goldfish, and present a h...

Most vertebrates develop distinct females and males, where sex is determined by repeatedly evolved environmental or genetic triggers. Undifferentiated sex chromosomes and large genomes have caused major knowledge gaps in amphibians. Only a single master sex-determining gene, the dmrt1-paralogue (dm-w) of female-heterogametic clawed frogs (Xenopus;...

Background The Percidae family comprises many fish species of major importance for aquaculture and fisheries. Based on three new chromosome-scale assemblies in Perca fluviatilis, Perca schrenkii, and Sander vitreus along with additional percid fish reference genomes, we provide an evolutionary and comparative genomic analysis of their sex-determina...

Artificial propagation and wild release may influence the genetic integrity of wild populations. This practice has been prevalent in fisheries for centuries and is often termed ‘stocking’. In the Laurentian Great Lakes (Great Lakes here‐on), walleye populations faced declines from the 1950s to the 1970s, prompting extensive stocking efforts for res...

A genomic database of all Earth’s eukaryotic species could contribute to many scientific discoveries; however, only a tiny fraction of species have genomic information available. In 2018, scientists across the world united under the Earth BioGenome Project (EBP), aiming to produce a database of high-quality reference genomes containing all ~1.5 mil...

Although high-sugar diets are associated with metabolic diseases in humans, several bird lineages have independently evolved to primarily subsist on simple sugars from flower nectar or fruits. In this study, we address a key question of the repeatability of molecular evolution by investigating the convergent and lineage-specific molecular mechanism...

Code availability: https://github.com/HMPNK/HANNO * Outperforms most methods in speed by a factor of at least 10-20X * Can annotate a large vertebrate genome in below 1h. * Includes functional annotation using eggNog, protein homology and BUSCO. * Transcript models include UTRs * Works well with medium diverged input evidence (i.e. using NCBI...

The catastrophic loss of aquatic life in the Central European Oder River in 2022, caused by a toxic bloom of the haptophyte microalga Prymnesium parvum (in a wide sense, s.l.), underscores the need to improve our understanding of the genomic basis of the toxin. Previous morphological, phylogenetic, and genomic studies have revealed cryptic diversit...

The Percidae family comprises many fish species of major importance for aquaculture and fisheries. Based on three new chromosome-scale assemblies in Perca fluviatilis, Perca schrenkii and Sander vitreus along with additional percid fish reference genomes, we provide an evolutionary and comparative genomic analysis of their sex-determination systems...

The Percidae family comprises many fish species of major importance for aquaculture and fisheries. Based on three new chromosome-scale assemblies in Perca fluviatilis, Perca schrenkii and Sander vitreus along with additional percid fish reference genomes, we provide an evolutionary and comparative genomic analysis of their sex-determination systems...

Most vertebrates develop separate females and males, where sex is determined by repeatedly-evolved environmental or genetic triggers. Undifferentiated sex chromosomes and large genomes have caused major knowledge gaps in amphibians. Only a single master gene is known in >8650 species, the dmrt1-paralogue (dm-w) of female-heterogametic clawed frogs...

Mandarin fish (Siniperca chuatsi) is one of the most economically important fish in China. However, it has the peculiar feeding habit that it feeds solely on live prey fish since first-feeding, while refuses dead prey fish or artificial diets. After the specific training procedure, partial individuals could accept dead prey fish and artificial diet...

Several hypotheses explain the prevalence of undifferentiated sex chromo- somes in poikilothermic vertebrates. Turnovers change the master sex determination gene, the sex chromosome or the sex determination system (e.g. XY to WZ). Jumping master genes stay main triggers but translocate to other chromosomes. Occasional recombination (e.g. in sex-rev...

Triggers and biological processes controlling male or female gonadal differentiation vary in vertebrates, with sex determination (SD) governed by environmental factors or simple to complex genetic mechanisms that evolved repeatedly and independently in various groups. Here, we review sex evolution across major clades of vertebrates with information...

Several studies have attempted to understand the origin and evolution of single‐exon genes (SEGs) in eukaryotic organisms, including fishes, but few have examined the functional and evolutionary relationships between SEGs and multiple‐exon gene (MEG) paralogs, in particular the conservation of promoter regions. Given that SEGs originate via the rev...

Sturgeon immunity is relevant for basic evolutionary and applied research, including caviar-and meat-producing aquaculture, protection of wild sturgeons and their re-introduction through conservation aquaculture. Starting from a comprehensive overview of immune organs, we discuss pathways of innate and adaptive immune systems in a vertebrate phylog...

MicroRNAs play a crucial role in eukaryotic gene regulation. For a long time, only little was known about microRNA-based gene regulatory mechanisms in polyploid animal genomes due to difficulties of polyploid genome assembly. However, in recent years, several polyploid genomes of fish, amphibian, and even invertebrate species have been sequenced an...

Genetic predisposition affects the penetrance of tumor-initiating mutations, such as APC mutations that stabilize β-catenin and cause intestinal tumors in mice and humans. However, the mechanisms involved in genetically predisposed penetrance are not well understood. Here, we analyzed tumor multiplicity and gene expression in tumor-prone ApcMin/+ m...

Several hypotheses explain the prevalence of undifferentiated sex chromosomes in poikilothermic vertebrates. Turnovers change the master sex determination gene, the sex chromosome or the sex determination system (e.g. XY to WZ). Jumping master genes stay main triggers but translocate to other chromosomes. Occasional recombination (e.g. in sex-rever...

Linking genomic variation to phenotypical traits remains a major challenge in evolutionary genetics. In this study, we use phylogenomic strategies to investigate a distinctive trait among mammals: the development of masculinizing ovotestes in female moles. By combining a chromosome-scale genome assembly of the Iberian mole, Talpa occidentalis, with...

Intersexuality in female moles Female moles are intersexual and develop masculinizing ovotestes, a distinctive trait among mammals. Real et al. investigated the origin of this trait by sequencing the Iberian mole genome and applying comparative strategies that integrate transcriptomic, epigenetic, and chromatin interaction data. They identified mol...

Mandarin fishes (Sinipercidae) are piscivores that feed solely on live fry. Unlike higher vertebrates, teleosts exhibit feeding behavior driven mainly by genetic responses, with no modification by learning from parents. Mandarin fishes could serve as excellent model organisms for studying feeding behavior. We report a long-read, chromosomal-scale g...

Sturgeons seem to be frozen in time. The archaic characteristics of this ancient fish lineage place it in a key phylogenetic position at the base of the ~30,000 modern teleost fish species. Moreover, sturgeons are notoriously polyploid, providing unique opportunities to investigate the evolution of polyploid genomes. We assembled a high-quality chr...

Background Nickel is the most frequent cause of T cell–mediated allergic contact dermatitis worldwide. In vitro, CD4+ T cells from all donors respond to nickel but the involved αβ T cell receptor (TCR) repertoire has not been comprehensively analyzed. Methods We introduce CD154 (CD40L) upregulation as a fast, unbiased, and quantitative method to d...

Background Easy-to-use and fast bioinformatics pipelines for long-read assembly that go beyond the contig level to generate highly continuous chromosome-scale genomes from raw data remain scarce. Result Chromosome-Scale Assembler (CSA) is a novel computationally highly efficient bioinformatics pipeline that fills this gap. CSA integrates informati...

When a species colonizes an urban habitat, differences in the environment can create novel selection pressures. Successful colonization will further lead to demographic perturbations and genetic drift, which can interfere with selection. Here, we test for consistent urban selection signals in multiple populations of the burrowing owl (Athene cunicu...

The Himalayas are one of earth's hotspots of biodiversity. Among its many cryptic and undiscovered organisms, including vertebrates, this complex high-mountain ecosystem is expected to harbour many species with adaptations to life in high altitudes. However, modern evolutionary genomic studies in Himalayan vertebrates are still at the beginning. Mo...

The European sea bass is one of the most important cultured fish in Europe and has a marked sexual growth dimorphism in favor of females. It is a gonochoristic species with polygenic sex determination, where a combination between still undifferentiated genetic factors and environmental temperature determines sex ratios. The molecular mechanisms res...

Xenoturbella and the acoelomorph worms (Xenacoelomorpha) are simple marine animals with controversial affinities. They have been placed as the sister group of all other bilaterian animals (Nephrozoa hypothesis), implying their simplicity is an ancient characteristic [1, 2]; alternatively, they have been linked to the complex Ambulacraria (echinoder...

Some species responded successfully to prehistoric changes in climate [1,2], while others failed to adapt, and became extinct [3]. The factors that determine successful climate adaptation remain poorly understood. We constructed a reference genome and studied physiological adaptations in the Alpine marmot (Marmota marmota), a large ground-dwelling...

The Hyrcanian Forests present a unique Tertiary relict ecosystem, covering the northern Elburz and Talysh Ranges (Iran, Azerbaijan), a poorly investigated, unique biodiversity hotspot with many cryptic species. Since the 1970s, two nominal species of Urodela, Hynobiidae, Batrachuperus (later: Paradactylodon) have been described: Paradactylodon pers...

Rare diseases and their underlying molecular causes are often poorly studied, posing challenges for patient diagnosis and prognosis. The development of next-generation sequencing and its decreasing costs promises to alleviate such issues by supplying personal genomic information at a moderate price. Here, we used crowdfunding as an alternative fund...

The Alpine Marmot ( Marmota marmota ) is a rodent remnant of the ‘ice-age’ climate of the Pleistocene steppe, and since the disappearance of this habitat, persists in the high altitude Alpine meadow. Sequencing its genome, we reveal that the long-term cold-climate adaptation has altered its metabolism, in particular biosynthesis and storage of fatt...

When a species successfully colonizes an urban habitat it can be expected that its population rapidly adapts to the new environment but also experiences demographic perturbations. It is, therefore, essential to gain an understanding of the population structure and the demographic history of the urban and neighbouring rural populations before studyi...

Here we present the 15 pseudochromosomes of sweet potato, Ipomoea batatas, the seventh most important crop in the world and the fourth most significant in China. By using a novel haplotyping method based on genome assembly, we have produced a half haplotype-resolved genome from ~296 Gb of paired-end sequence reads amounting to roughly 67-fold cover...

Background Fully isogenic lines in fish can be developed using “mitotic” gynogenesis (suppression of first zygotic mitosis following inactivation of the sperm genome). However, genome-wide verification of the steps in this process has seldom been applied. We used ddRADseq to generate SNP markers in a meiotic gynogenetic family of European seabass (...

Significance Plants produce structurally diverse specialized metabolites, many of which have been exploited in medicine or as pest control agents, whereas some have been incorporated in our daily lives, such as nicotine. In nature, these metabolites serve complex functions for plants’ ecological adaptations to biotic and abiotic stresses. By analyz...

Nicotine, the signature alkaloid of Nicotiana species responsible for the addictive properties of human tobacco smoking, functions as a defensive neurotoxin against attacking herbivores. However, the evolution of the genetic features that contributed to the assembly of the nicotine biosynthetic pathway remains unknown. We sequenced and assembled ge...

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pgen.1005954.].

Although the sweet potato, Ipomoea batatas, is the seventh most important crop in the world and the fourth most significant in China, its genome has not yet been sequenced. The reason, at least in part, is that the genome has proven very difficult to assemble, being hexaploid and highly polymorphic; it has a presumptive composition of two B 1 and f...

Author We describe the genome assembly of Asian seabass (Lates calcarifer), a marine teleost with aquaculture relevance. Though >500 eukaryotic genome sequences are available in public repositories, the majority are highly fragmented with incomplete assemblies, which explains why considerable effort and resources are often spent to improve their q...

Observed k-mer distribution and modeling results. k-mer frequency counting analyses was done for the Illumina genomic reads. Jellyfish [74] was used with the following parameters and commands: jellyfish count -m 21 -s 100000000 -t 5 -o output -C InputFile (counting 21-mer frequencies), jellyfish merge -o output.jf output_* (merging multiple output...

Pipeline for Asian seabass population data analyses. The flowchart outlines the steps taken for analyses of Asian seabass genome sequence information from 62 fishes collected from 13 regions across its geographic range. (TIF)

Asian seabass tandem repeat consensus sequences. (DOCX)

The number of contigs in the primary Asian seabass genome assembly (v1; 3,917 contigs) compared to those of published fish genome assemblies (see S23 Table for more details). (TIF)

Evaluation of the Asian seabass scaffolded genome assembly (v2) by mapping Illumina PE Genome reads to assembly for linear insert size libraries in the size range of 500 bp (A) and 750 bp (B). The 80X Illumina paired-end HiSeq genome sequence data was mapped to the PacBio-based assembled genome using the CLC Genomics Workbench version 8.5.1 mapping...

A screenshot of the Asian seabass genome assembly (v1) showing a location wherein a ~15 kb region missed by short reads has been captured using long reads from PacBio sequencing. (TIF)

The Asian seabass genome assembly contains a more continuous cluster of MHC-class I genes compared to the well-assembled G. aculeatus genome. The L. calcarifer MHC-class I genes were found to be located on eight contigs/scaffolds, four of which were placed onto linkage group 3 (LG3). Four of these eight contigs/scaffolds were also >1Mb in length. T...

Tandem repeats with highest coverage of 23-mer HiSeq reads. (XLSX)

Summary of transposable elements identified in the Asian seabass genome. (XLSX)

Placement of genome sequences ≥40kb on assembled Maptigs. (XLSX)

Inventory of 247 overlaps between ends of neighbouring contigs that were closed during scaffolding of the Asian seabass genome. (XLSX)

Read statistics for B chromosome-derived sequences. (XLSX)