Flow Cytometry technique to measure the DNA content of H. vastatrix urediniospores was run in Faculty of Life Sciences of Tel Aviv University thanks to a special collaboration of Professor Yehoshua Anikster. A total of 10 samples of rust were measured obtaining the following results:

According to these measures two groups in our samples can be distinguished, whit DNA mean content of 880.2 and 1202.9 Mb (1 pg = 978Mb):

Preliminary, given the dikaryotic character of the uredionospores, we have a genome size of 440 and 610 Mb for the two groups. This may point to a different ploidny – 2N compared to 4N. It seems the coffee rust is relatively big sized compared with other rusts as cereal rust (Puccinia graminis ~ 88.64 Mb), flux and linseed rust (Melampsora lini ~ 170 Mb) and maize rust (Ustilago maydis ~ 20 Mb). The results of the weight of the nuclear DNA of the H. vastatrix samples are in the size of the Allium rusts which are much smaller in comparison to some of the Leguminae rusts.

Further studies about ploidy level and chromosome number in urediniospores are required to explore the interesting difference in genome sizes obtained between two groups of samples.

OTHER GENOMIC FEATURES

For large contigs (>850bp) nucleotide content, GC content and AT/GC ratio are summarized bellow:

For all contigs nucleotide content, GC content and AT/GC ratio are summarized bellow: