Telomere Length in Plants Estimated with Long Read Sequencing

Telomeres play an important role in chromosome stability and their length is thought to be related to an organism's lifestyle and lifespan. Telomere length is variable across plant species and between cultivars of the same species, possibly conferring adaptive advantage. However, it is not known whether telomere length is related to lifestyle or life span across a diverse array of plant species due to the lack of information on telomere length in plants. Here we leverage genomes assembled with long read sequencing data to estimate telomere length by chromosome. We find that long read assemblies based on Oxford Nanopore Technologies (ONT) accurately predict telomere length in the two model plant species Arabidopsis thaliana and Oryza sativa matching lab-based length estimates. We then estimate telomere length across an array of plant species with different lifestyles and lifespans and find that in general gymnosperms have shorter telomeres compared to eudicots and monocots. Crop species frequently have longer telomeres than their wild relatives, and species that have been maintained clonally such as hemp have long telomeres possibly reflecting that this lifestyle requires long term chromosomal stability.