The draft genome of Cardamine resedifolia: genomic tools to investigate plant adaptation to high altitude

Cardamine resedifolia is a perennial species usually growing on siliceous substrates in open spaces between 1,500 and 3,500 meters above sea level. The environmental and ecological factors associated to this habitat evidently impose distinct selective pressures to the species, as revealed by an in-depth analysis of the patterns of molecular evolution in genes involved in cold response in photosynthesis (Ometto et al. 2012). However, both protein sequence and gene regulation may be involved in adaptation. Thus, a comprehensive knowledge on the genome structure and evolution of the species is necessary to gather precious insights in the pattern of coding genes and regulatory sequence evolution. To this aim, we present the draft genome sequence of C. resedifolia and its partial annotation, which represent the first step to characterize the genetic basis of adaptation to high altitudes for this and also other plant species