A comparison of 27 Arabidopsis thaliana genomes and the path toward an unbiased characterization of genetic polymorphism.

Making sense of whole-genome polymorphism data is challenging, but it is essential for overcoming the biases in SNP data. Here we analyze 27 genomes of Arabidopsis thaliana to illustrate these issues. Genome size variation is mostly due to tandem repeat regions that are difficult to assemble.

Pangenomic context reveals the extent of intraspecific plant NLR evolution.

Nucleotide-binding leucine-rich repeat (NLR) proteins are major components of the plant immune system, recognizing pathogen effectors and triggering defense responses. Because of the diversity of pathogen effector repertoires, NLRs have extraordinary sequence, structural, and regulatory variability. Although processes contributing to NLR diversity have been identified, the precise evolution of NLRs in their genomic context and along the multiple axes of diversity has been difficult to trace.