The GenTree Dendroecological Collection, tree-ring and wood density data from seven tree species across Europe

The dataset presented here was collected by the GenTree project (EU-Horizon 2020), which aims to improve the use of forest genetic resources across Europe by better understanding how trees adapt to their local environment. This dataset of individual tree-core characteristics including ring-width series and whole-core wood density was collected for seven ecologically and economically important European tree species: silver birch (Betula pendula), European beech (Fagus sylvatica), Norway spruce (Picea abies), European black poplar (Populus nigra), maritime pine (Pinus pinaster), Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris), and sessile oak (Quercus petraea). Tree-ring width measurements were obtained from 3600 trees in 142 populations and whole-core wood density was measured for 3098 trees in 125 populations. This dataset covers most of the geographical and climatic range occupied by the selected species. The potential use of it will be highly valuable for assessing ecological and evolutionary responses to environmental conditions as well as for model development and parameterization, to predict adaptability under climate change scenarios

The GenTree Platform: growth traits and tree-level environmental data in 12 European forest tree species

Background: Progress in the field of evolutionary forest ecology has been hampered by the huge challenge of phenotyping trees across their ranges in their natural environments, and the limitation in high-resolution environmental information. Findings: The GenTree Platform contains phenotypic and environmental data from 4,959 trees from 12 ecologically and economically important European forest tree species: Abies alba Mill. (silver fir), Betula pendula Roth. (silver birch), Fagus sylvatica L. (European beech), Picea abies (L.) H. Karst (Norway spruce), Pinus cembra L. (Swiss stone pine), Pinus halepensis Mill. (Aleppo pine), Pinus nigra Arnold (European black pine), Pinus pinaster Aiton (maritime pine), Pinus sylvestris L. (Scots pine), Populus nigra L. (European black poplar), Taxus baccata L. (English yew), and Quercus petraea (Matt.) Liebl. (sessile oak). Phenotypic (height, diameter at breast height, crown size, bark thickness, biomass, straightness, forking, branch angle, fructification), regeneration, environmental in situ measurements (soil depth, vegetation cover, competition indices), and environmental modeling data extracted by using bilinear interpolation accounting for surrounding conditions of each tree (precipitation, temperature, insolation, drought indices) were obtained from trees in 194 sites covering the species’ geographic ranges and reflecting local environmental gradients. Conclusion: The GenTree Platform is a new resource for investigating ecological and evolutionary processes in forest trees. The coherent phenotyping and environmental characterization across 12 species in their European ranges allow for a wide range of analyses from forest ecologists, conservationists, and macro-ecologists. Also, the data here presented can be linked to the GenTree Dendroecological collection, the GenTree Leaf Trait collection, and the GenTree Genomic collection presented elsewhere, which together build the largest evolutionary forest ecology data collection available

Between but not within species variation in the distribution of fitness effects

New mutations provide the raw material for evolution and adaptation. The distribution of fitness effects (DFE) describes the spectrum of effects of new mutations that can occur along a genome, and is therefore of vital interest in evolutionary biology. Recent work has uncovered striking similarities in the DFE between closely related species, prompting us to ask whether there is variation in the DFE among populations of the same species, or among species with different degrees of divergence, i.e., whether there is variation in the DFE at different levels of evolution. Using exome capture data from six tree species sampled across Europe we characterised the DFE for multiple species, and for each species, multiple populations, and investigated the factors potentially influencing the DFE, such as demography, population divergence and genetic background. We find statistical support for there being variation in the DFE at the species level, even among relatively closely related species. However, we find very little difference at the population level, suggesting that differences in the DFE are primarily driven by deep features of species biology, and that evolutionarily recent events, such as demographic changes and local adaptation, have little impact

An integrated information system dedicated to oak genomics and genetics

GnpIS is an information system designed to integrate and link genomic, genetic and environmental data into a single environment dedicated to plant (crops and forest trees) and fungi data. GnpIS is regularly improved with new functionalities answering specific needs raised by scientists and released several times a year. We propose to illustrate the integrated genome annotation system we set up with a focus on the interoperability between genomic and genetic data (e.g. Markers, QTL) present in GnpIS-core, through the use case Quercus robur (the pedunculate oak), a large, complex and highly heterozygous genome.This genome annotation system relies on GMOD interfaces such as WebApollo/JBrowse and Intermine to make these data available under a user-friendly environment. All annotations and analysis results (Transposable Elements (TEs), genes, ncRNA ...) and functional annotation (protein-coding genes) were obtained using powerful and robust pipelines: (i) REPET used to detect, classify and annotate TEs representing 50% of the genome; (ii) Eugene which integrates ab initio and similarity gene finding softwares to predict gene models; (iii) ncRNA were annotated using different tools to annotate lncRNA, miRNA, rRNA, tRNA (iv) A functional annotation pipeline mainly based on Interproscan and comparative genomics was performed on the 25,808 highly confident predicted proteins. This system allows experts to analyze their protein families of interest and curate/validate gene structure.All together these resources provide a framework to study the two key evolutionary processes that explain the remarkable diversity found within the Quercus genus: local adaptation and speciation

An integrated information system dedicated to oak genomics and genetics

GnpIS is an information system designed to integrate and link genomic, genetic and environmental data into a single environment dedicated to plant (crops and forest trees) and fungi data. GnpIS is regularly improved with new functionalities answering specific needs raised by scientists and released several times a year. We propose to illustrate the integrated genome annotation system we set up with a focus on the interoperability between genomic and genetic data (e.g. Markers, QTL) present in GnpIS-core, through the use case Quercus robur (the pedunculate oak), a large, complex and highly heterozygous genome.This genome annotation system relies on GMOD interfaces such as WebApollo/JBrowse and Intermine to make these data available under a user-friendly environment. All annotations and analysis results (Transposable Elements (TEs), genes, ncRNA ...) and functional annotation (protein-coding genes) were obtained using powerful and robust pipelines: (i) REPET used to detect, classify and annotate TEs representing 50% of the genome; (ii) Eugene which integrates ab initio and similarity gene finding softwares to predict gene models; (iii) ncRNA were annotated using different tools to annotate lncRNA, miRNA, rRNA, tRNA (iv) A functional annotation pipeline mainly based on Interproscan and comparative genomics was performed on the 25,808 highly confident predicted proteins. This system allows experts to analyze their protein families of interest and curate/validate gene structure.All together these resources provide a framework to study the two key evolutionary processes that explain the remarkable diversity found within the Quercus genus: local adaptation and speciation

De novo assembly of maritime pine transcriptome: implications for forest breeding and biotechnology

Maritime pine (Pinus pinasterAit.) is a widely distributed conifer species in Southwestern Europe and one of the most advanced models for conifer research. In the current work, comprehensive characterization of the maritime pine transcriptome was performed using a combination of two different next-generation sequencing platforms, 454 and Illumina. De novo assembly of the transcriptome provided a catalogue of 26 020 unique transcripts in maritime pine trees and a collection of 9641 full-length cDNAs. Quality of the transcriptome assembly was validated by RT-PCR amplification of selected transcripts for structural and regulatory genes. Transcription factors and enzyme-encoding transcripts were annotated. Furthermore, the available sequencing data permitted the identification of polymorphisms and the establishment of robust single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) and simple-sequence repeat (SSR) databases for genotyping applications and integration of translational genomics in maritime pine breeding programmes. All our data are freely available at SustainpineDB, the P. pinaster expressional database. Results reported here on the maritime pine transcriptome represent a valuable resource for future basic and applied studies on this ecological and economically important pine species

Decoding the oak genome: public release of sequence data, assembly, annotation and publication strategies.

International audienceThe 1.5 Gbp/2C genome of pedunculate oak (Quercus robur) has been sequenced. A strategy was established for dealing with the challenges imposed by the sequencing of such a large, complex and highly heterozygous genome by a whole-genome shotgun (WGS) approach, without the use of costly and time-consuming methods, such as fosmid or BAC clone-based hierarchical sequencing methods. The sequencing strategy combined short and long reads. Over 49 million reads provided by Roche 454 GS-FLX technology were assembled into contigs and combined with shorter Illumina sequence reads from paired-end and mate-pair libraries of different insert sizes, to build scaffolds. Errors were corrected and gaps filled with Illumina paired-end reads and contaminants detected, resulting in a total of 17,910 scaffolds (>2 kb) corresponding to 1.34 Gb. Fifty per cent of the assembly was accounted for by 1468 scaffolds (N50 of 260 kb). Initial comparison with the phylogenetically related Prunus persica gene model indicated that genes for 84.6% of the proteins present in peach (mean protein coverage of 90.5%) were present in our assembly. The second and third steps in this project are genome annotation and the assignment of scaffolds to the oak genetic linkage map. In accordance with the Bermuda and Fort Lauderdale agreements and the more recent Toronto Statement, the oak genome data have been released into public sequence repositories in advance of publication. In this presubmission paper, the oak genome consortium describes its principal lines of work and future directions for analyses of the nature, function and evolution of the oak genome

Author Correction: The GenTree Dendroecological Collection, tree-ring and wood density data from seven tree species across Europe

The dataset presented here was collected by the GenTree project (EU-Horizon 2020), which aims to improve the use of forest genetic resources across Europe by better understanding how trees adapt to their local environment. This dataset of individual tree-core characteristics including ring-width series and whole-core wood density was collected for seven ecologically and economically important European tree species: silver birch (Betula pendula), European beech (Fagus sylvatica), Norway spruce (Picea abies), European black poplar (Populus nigra), maritime pine (Pinus pinaster), Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris), and sessile oak (Quercus petraea). Tree-ring width measurements were obtained from 3600 trees in 142 populations and whole-core wood density was measured for 3098 trees in 125 populations. This dataset covers most of the geographical and climatic range occupied by the selected species. The potential use of it will be highly valuable for assessing ecological and evolutionary responses to environmental conditions as well as for model development and parameterization, to predict adaptability under climate change scenarios.An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper

Employee in an organization as a good citizen

This graduation thesis focuses on the identification of key sources of Organizational Citizenship Behaviour (OCB) which are present in a chosen organization. The outcome of this work contains a list of factors which have supporting or adverse effect on OCB usage. The thesis also includes recommendations for arrangements of the working environment which would increase the willingness of the employees to exhibit OCB

The GenTree Leaf Collection: Inter‐ and intraspecific leaf variation in seven forest tree species in Europe

Trait variation within species can reveal plastic and/or genetic responses to environmental gradients, and may indicate where local adaptation has occurred. Here, we present a dataset of rangewide variation in leaf traits from seven of the most ecologically and economically important tree species in Europe. Sample collection and trait assessment are embedded in the GenTree project (EU-Horizon 2020), which aims at characterizing the genetic and phenotypic variability of forest tree species to optimize the management and sustainable use of forest genetic resources. Our dataset captures substantial intra- and interspecific leaf phenotypic variability, and provides valuable information for studying the relationship between ecosystem functioning and trait variability of individuals, and the response and resilience of species to environmental changes.Optimising the management and sustainable use of forest genetic resources in Europ