Aspergillus flavus NRRL 3357 is a strain capable of producing Aflatoxin, which can contaminate food and livestock feed. Aflatoxins are among the most carcinogenic substances known and are capable of causing liver damage, liver cancer, developmental delays in children and more. NRRL 3357 is also the second leading cause of Aspergillosis (Nierman et al., 2015), a severe (and frequently fatal) disease in immunocompromised human patients.
The Aspergillus flavus NRRL 3357 genome was sequenced
and assembled by Jeff Skerker (UC Berkeley, CA) using a combination
of long-read and short-read datasets (Pacbio, Oxford Nanopore, and
Illumina). Eight chromosomes were assembled using a hybrid assembly
method and the CANU assembler. The assembly was polished
using Pacbio data and the Arrow algorithm and final error
correction performed using Pilon and Illumina data. Eight
chromosomes were assembled, 7 out of 8 are complete
telomere-to-telomere assemblies. This assembly was then annotated
using the JGI annotation pipeline, with modifications (see info
page).
Sequencing and assembly was supported by a grant from the
Innovative Genomics Institute at UC Berkeley (PI: N. Louise Glass),
in collaboration with Nancy Keller at U. Wisconsin.
References:
Nierman WC, Yu J, Fedorova-Abrams ND, Losada L, Cleveland TE, Bhatnagar D, Bennett JW, Dean R, Payne GA, 2015. Genome Sequence of Aspergillus flavus NRRL 3357, a Strain That Causes Aflatoxin Contamination of Food and Feed. Genome Announcements 3(2). pii: e00168-15. doi: 10.1128/genomeA.00168-15.
Genome Reference(s)
Skerker JM, Pianalto KM, Mondo SJ, Yang K, Arkin AP, Keller NP, Grigoriev IV, Louise Glass NL
Chromosome assembled and annotated genome sequence of Aspergillus flavus NRRL 3357.
G3 (Bethesda). 2021 Aug 7;11(8):. doi: 10.1093/g3journal/jkab213