Ticao Zhang

Yunnan University of Chinese Medicine

Cultivated hawthorn (Crataegus pinnatifida var. major) is an important medicinal and edible plant with a long history of use for health protection in China. Herein, we provide a de novo chromosome‐level genome sequence of the hawthorn cultivar ‘Qiu Jinxing’. We assembled an 823.41 Mb genome encoding 40,571 genes and further anchored the 779.24 Mb s...

Significance Strawberry is a very popular fruit. The strawberry genus ( Fragaria ) has emerged as a model system for various fundamental and applied research in recent years. Here, by using high-throughput sequencing technologies, we provide de novo whole-genome sequences for five wild strawberry species and genome resequencing data for 128 additio...

Background Understanding how organisms evolve and adapt to extreme habitats is of crucial importance in evolutionary ecology. Altitude gradients are an important determinant of the distribution pattern and range of organisms due to distinct climate conditions at different altitudes. High-altitude regions often provide extreme environments including...

Crucihimalaya himalaica , a close relative of Arabidopsis and Capsella , grows on the Qinghai–Tibet Plateau (QTP) about 4,000 m above sea level and represents an attractive model system for studying speciation and ecological adaptation in extreme environments. We assembled a draft genome sequence of 234.72 Mb encoding 27,019 genes and investigated...

Background Fragaria nilgerrensis , which is a diploid wild strawberry with excellent drought-resistance, would provide useful candidate genes for improving drought resistance of cultivated strawberry. So far, its molecular regulatory networks involved in drought stress are unclear. We therefore investigated the drought response regulatory networks...

Hippophae tibetana (Tibetan sea-buckthorn) is one of the highest distributed woody plants in the world (3,000-5,200 meters a.s.l.). It is characterized by adaptation to extreme environment and important economic values. Here, we combined PacBio Hifi platform and Hi-C technology to assemble a 1,452.75 Mb genome encoding 33,367 genes with a Contig N5...

Transgenerational plasticity (TGP) occurs when maternal environments influence the expression of traits in offspring, and in some cases may increase fitness of offspring and have evolutionary significance. However, little is known about the extent of maternal environment influence on gene expression of offspring, and its relationship with trait var...

The hawthorns (Crataegus spp.) are widely distributed and famous for their edible and medicinal values. There are ∼18 species and seven varieties of hawthorn in China distributed throughout the country. We now report the chloroplast genome sequences from C. scabrifolia, C. chungtienensis and C. oresbia, from the southwest of China and compare them...

The new genus and species Pulvinatusia xuegulaensis (Brassicaceae) are described and illustrated. The species is a cushion plant collected from Xuegu La, Xizang, China. Its vegetative parts are most similar to those of Arenaria bryophylla (Caryophyllaceae) co-occurring in the same region, while its leaves and fruits closely resemble those of Xerodr...

Tissue culture is an important tool for asexual propagation and genetic transformation of strawberry plants. In plant tissue culture, variation of DNA methylation is a potential source of phenotypic variation in regenerated plants. However, the genome wide dynamic methylation patterns of strawberry tissue culture remain unclear. In this study, we u...

The Sino-Himalaya region is located in the southeast margin of the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau (QTP) with several Asian rivers in this area, namely the Yarlung Zangbo River (YZR), Salween, Mekong, and Jinshajiang River and their tributaries. All these rivers currently flow independently into the Indian Ocean, the South China Sea (Pacific Ocean) and the...

Saussurea wettsteiniana is a medicinally important herb endemic to Hengduan Mountains. Here, we report and characterize the complete chloroplast genome sequence of S. wettsteiniana to provide genomic resources useful for future study. The complete chloroplast genome is 152,631 bp in length, consisting of a large single copy and a small single copy...

Fragaria nilgerrensis is a diploid wild strawberry widely distributed in Southwest China. Its white color and "peach-like" fragrance of fruits are valuable characters for the genetic improvement of cultivated strawberry plants. Its strong biotic and abiotic resistance and tolerance also enable it to survive in different habitats in the field. In th...

Thlaspi arvense (field pennycress) is widespread in temperate regions of the northern hemisphere. We estimated the genetic and epigenetic structure of eight T. arvense populations (131 individuals) in China using amplified fragment length polymorphism and methylation-sensitive amplified polymorphism molecular-marker techniques. We detected low dive...

It has been hypothesized that geological and climatic changes in the Sino–Himalayan region played a significant role in evolutionary history. In this study, we tested this hypothesis by investigating the phylogeography of Excoecaria acerifolia (Euphorbiaceae), a riparian plant species that is widely distributed in the hot/warm-dry river valleys of...

Hawthorn is of high economic value owing to its medicinal properties and health benefits. Crataegus is a member of the Rosaceae family; the genus has a complicated taxonomic history, and several theories on its origin have been proposed. In this study, 53 accessions from seven Crataegus taxa native to China and accessions of exotic Crataegus specie...

Tibet is one of the main distribution centers of wild Fragaria species in China. There are abundant, precious and rare wild strawberry resources. This paper focused on the classification, distribution and evaluation of the 65 wild strawberry accessions collected from 17 counties in Tibet. The main taxonomical characters, such as stolon branching, l...

Multiple closely related species with genomic sequences provide an ideal system for studies on comparative and evolutionary genomics, as well as the mechanism of speciation. The whole genome sequences of six strawberry species (Fragaria spp.) have been released, which provide one of the richest genomic resources of any plant genus. In this study, w...

The Qinghai-Tibet Plateau (QTP) has the highest biodiversity for an extreme environment worldwide, and provides an ideal natural laboratory to study adaptive evolution. In this study, we generated a draft genome sequence of cyanobacteria Trichormus sp. NMC-1 in the QTP and performed whole transcriptome sequencing under low temperature to investigat...

The extreme environment of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau (QTP) provides an ideal natural laboratory for studies on adaptive evolution. Few genome/transcriptome based studies have been conducted on how plants adapt to the environments of QTP compared to numerous studies on vertebrates. Crucihimalaya himalaica is a close relative of Arabidopsis with typi...

Thlaspi arvense is a well-known annual farmland weed with worldwide distribution, which can be found from sea level to above 4000 m high on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau (QTP). In this paper, a phylogeographic history of T. arvense including 19 populations from China was inferred by using three chloroplast (cp) DNA segments (trnL-trnF, rpl32-trnL and...

Winter-annual accessions of Arabidopsis thaliana require either exposure to cold stress or vernalization to initiate flowering via FRIGIDA (FRI). FRI acts as a scaffold protein to recruit several chromatin modifiers that epigenetically modify flowering genes. Here, we report that proteasome-mediated FRI degradation regulates flowering during vernal...

Vitis vinifera (grape) is one of the most economically significant fruit crops in the world. The availability of the recently released grape genome sequence offers the opportunity to identify and analyze some important gene families in this species. Subtilases are a group of subtilisin-like serine proteases that are involved in many biological proc...

Background The central function of chloroplasts is to carry out photosynthesis, and its gene content and structure are highly conserved across land plants. Parasitic plants, which have reduced photosynthetic ability, suffer gene losses from the chloroplast (cp) genome accompanied by the relaxation of selective constraints. Compared with the rapid r...

Following the rapid uplift of the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau, the reorganization of the major river drainages in southwest China was primarily caused by river capture events. However, the impact of these past changes in drainage patterns on the current distribution and genetic structure of the endemic flora of this region remains largely unknown. Here...