Genome sequencing and assembly of Mesua Ferrea or Nagakeshara

The first draft genome assembly of the plant Mesua Ferrea also colloquially known as Nagakeshara has been published by Patil et.al., 2020. Using high coverage (~180X ) Illumina sequencing data, the draft genome has been assembled using the latest genome assembly software. Due to its importance in traditional medicine and use as a biofuel, the plant has also acquired important religious significance. Infact, it has been made the state flower of the North-eastern states of Tripura and Mizoram. The de novo assembly generated by Patil et.al., 2020 is 614 Mega-base pair (Mbp) in size and has an N50 of 392 Kilo-base pairs (Kbp). The assembly quality is thought to be comparable to other published Malpighiales genomes. 

Some genome assemblies aspire to have even higher N50 values to be considered of high quality. To achieve these exceedingly high contiguity values these projects tend to rely upon Pacbio sequencing data or Nanopore sequencing data. In addition to this, some projects utilize optical mapping data also. However, these advanced methods of sequencing are expensive and equipment for these methods are hard to find. However, the manuscript published by Patil et.al., 2020 adds an additional dimension to their study by performing a comparative analysis of the demographic histories of several forest plants using the PSMC program. Notably, the parameter settings used to run PSMC are noted and proper optimization is performed. This is in contrast a slew of papers which tend to ignore the parameter settings that are to be used.

A previous version of the manuscript titled "CoalQC - Quality control while inferring demographic histories from genomic data: Application to forest tree genomes" dealing with various technical aspects now continues to languish on the Biorxiv repository. This may be a good testament to the fact that good English writing skills and proper structuring of the manuscript is more important than technical correctness when publishing in higher impact factor journals. Appeals to the contrary are interesting but unlikely to make much of an impact.