Home • Aspergillus flavus NRRL3357 v1.0
Transmitted light microscopy image of Aspergillus flavus conidiophores at 400x magnification.  Photo taken by Tracy Debenport.
Transmitted light microscopy image of Aspergillus flavus conidiophores at 400x magnification. Photo taken by Tracy Debenport.

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)