Magnolia officinalis, a representative tall aromatic tree of the Magnoliaceae family, is a medicinal plant that is widely used in diverse industries from medicine to cosmetics. We report a chromosome-scale draft genome of M. officinalis, in which ∼99.66% of the sequences were anchored onto 19 chromosomes with the scaffold N50 of 76.62 Mb. We found that a high proportion of repetitive sequences was a common feature of three Magnoliaceae with known genomic data. Magnoliids were a sister clade to eudicots-monocots, which provided more support for understanding the phylogenetic position among angiosperms. An ancient duplication event occurred in the genome of M. officinalis and was shared with Lauraceae. Based on RNA-seq analysis, we identified several key enzyme-coding gene families associated with the biosynthesis of lignans in the genome. The construction of the M. officinalis genome sequence will serve as a reference for further studies of Magnolia, as well as other Magnoliaceae.

Summary Soybean is one of the most important oilseed and fodder crops. Benefiting from the efforts of soybean breeders and the development of breeding technology, large number of germplasm has been generated over the last 100 years. Nevertheless, soybean breeding needs to be accelerated to meet the needs of a growing world population, to promote sustainable agriculture and to address future environmental changes. The acceleration is highly reliant on the discoveries in gene functional studies. The release of the reference soybean genome in 2010 has significantly facilitated the advance in soybean functional genomics. Here, we review the research progress in soybean omics (genomics, transcriptomics, epigenomics and proteomics), germplasm development (germplasm resources and databases), gene discovery (genes that are responsible for important soybean traits including yield, flowering and maturity, seed quality, stress resistance, nodulation and domestication) and transformation technology during the past decade. At the end, we also briefly discuss current challenges and future directions.

Magnolia officinalis , M. officinalis sub s p. biloba and M. hypoleuca are all typical medicinal plants, belonging to genus Magnolia and Family Magnoliaceae. Their molecular information, particularly genetic difference, were known less. In this study, the platform Illumina HiSeq was used to sequence and assemble a novel cp (chloroplast) genome of M . hypoleuca followed by cp purification. Combined with two published cp rawdata, gene cycles and function annotations were comparably performed for the three plant species. The results indicated that 19 791 019 clean reads was assembled for M . hypoleuca cp, Q30 being 91.33%, and genome 160 051 bp. Its GC content is 39.2%, including 37 tRNAs and 8 rRNAs. The M. hypoleuca had smaller chloroplast genome and more introns (or exons) than M. officinalis and M. officinalis sub s p. biloba . And there were respectively 11 and 8 more functional genes in M . hypoleuca cp than that in the other two. Based on cp complete genomes sequences, we constructed the phylogenetic relationship and estimated the divergence time of the three species by ML (Maximum likelihood) method, with other 10 published Magnoliaceae species. The results showed that M. officinalis sub s p. biloba and M. officinalis might diverge from M. hypoleuca around 18.98 Ma, then they diverged from each other around 15.00 Ma. Additionally, the middle Miocene warming period might play an important role in the demographic and evolutionary histories of the three Magnolias, which provided a novel insight of the origin and dispersal routes of M . hypoleuca .

Magnolia officinalis, a representative tall aromatic tree of the Magnoliaceae family, is a widely used medicinal plants with diverse medicinal values and applications, such as afforestation, ornamental and so on. We report a chromosome‑scale draft genome of M. officinalis, in which ~ 99.66% of the sequences were anchored onto 19 chromosomes with the scaffold N50 of 76.62 Mb. We found that a high proportion of repetitive sequences was a common feature of three Magnoliaceae with known genomic data, and M. officinalis was the plant in Magnoliaceae with the highest ratio of repetitive sequences found so far. Phylogenetic analyses reveal that magnoliids are as sister to the eudicots-monocots clade, which provides insight into the phylogenetic position between eudicots and monocots. WGD analysis showed that an ancient duplication event occurred in the M. officinalis genome, is shared by Lauraceae. Based on gene functional annotations and RNA-seq, we identified several key enzyme-coding gene families associated with the biosynthesis of lignan in the genome. In addition, the floral fragrance of M. officinalis is mainly attributed to its terpenes, we classified many putative genes involved in the biosynthesis of terpene synthases. The construction of the M. officinalis genome sequence map will serve as a reference for further studies of Magnolia as well as other Magnoliaceae.