Populus trichocarpa was sequenced ten times over to attain the highest quality standards and to produce a relatively contiguous, high quality plant genome. Poplar was chosen as the first tree DNA to be sequenced because of its relatively compact genetic complement, some 50 times smaller than the genome of pine, making the poplar an ideal model system for trees. The poplar genome, divided into 19 chromosomes, is four times larger than the genome of the first sequenced plant, Arabidopsis thaliana . Analysis of the assembled genome reveals a whole-genome duplication event; about 8,000 pairs of duplicated genes from that event survived in the Poplar genome. A second, older duplication event is indistinguishably coincident with the divergence of the Populus and Arabidopsis lineages (from JGI - The Joint Genome Insitute and Tuskan, et.al.). This is the second improved version of poplar (v3 assembly) and includes 81 Mb of finished clone sequence combined with a new, high density poplar map. This genome release represents 6 years of genome improvement, advances in genome assembly, and poplar experimental work funded by the DOE. Genome

    The main genome assembly is approximately 422.9 Mb arranged in 1,446 scaffolds
    Approximately 422.9 Mb arranged in 8,313 scaffolds (~2.585 gap)
    Scaffold N50 (L50) = 19.5 Mb (8)
    Contig N50 (L50) = 552.8 Kb (206)
    181 scaffolds are > 50kb in size, representing approximately 97.3% of the genome

Loci

    42,950 loci containing protein-coding transcripts

Transcripts

    63,498 protein-coding transcripts

Source: https://phytozome.jgi.doe.gov/pz/portal.html#!info?alias=Org_Ptrichocarpa_er