About the project

Living fossils are extant taxons that phenotypically resemble related species known only from the fossil record, with minimal superficial changes. Araucaria araucana, commonly called the monkey puzzle tree, pewen or Chilean pine, is an evergreen gymnosperm tree, native to central and southern Chile and western Argentina, popularly used as a garden tree and planted for the unusual visual effect of its thick, «reptilian» branches. Because of the prevalence of similar species in ancient prehistory, it is called a living fossil. Its conservation status is ‘Endangered’ due to the dwindling population caused by logging, forest fires, and grazing. Araucaria araucana seeds are edible, similar to large pine nuts, and are harvested by indigenous peoples in Argentina and Chile. The tree has some potential to be a food crop in other areas in the future, thriving in climates with cool oceanic summers, e.g., western Scotland, where other nut crops do not grow well.

As part of a collaboration with the Plant Epigenetic Lab, led by Dr. Rodrigo Hasbún (University of Concepción, Chile) we are currently reassembling the megagenome of A. araucana, estimated at 20Gb. The group of Dr. Hasbún has obtained high quality sequences from both haploid and diploid tissue using Illumina, PacBio HiFi and Oxford Nanopore platforms.

The assembly of this megagenome is a difficult task, the reason why the project intends to use and compare genome sequences of close species. The nearest extant relative is Araucaria angustifolia, a South American Araucaria from Brazil which counts on some public genomic data. We will also compare the scaffolds with the chromosome-scaled genome of the Chinese Pine. The recently found ‘Wollemi pine’, Wollemia, discovered in southeast Australia, is classed in the plant family Araucariaceae. Their common ancestry dates to a time when Australia, Antarctica, and South America were linked by land – all three continents were once part of the supercontinent known as Gondwana.

About the portal

The portal was created using the EasyGDB platform, developed by Aureliano Bombarely and Noe Fernandez-Pozo. See tool publication here.