A near telomere-to-telomere genome assembly of coltsfoot (Tussilago farfara)
- Ying Li
- Guangsen Zhou
- Chunlan Dong
- Jinyuan Chen
- Xingyi Zhang
- Wenliang Liu
- Wangshan Zheng
- Yanli Zheng
- Shiyu Wei
- Yan Leng
- Junhui Ma
- Xufeng Dong
- Longxiao Li
- Yongqiang Tian
2026-08-18
Tussilago farfara L., commonly known as coltsfoot, is a perennial medicinal member of the Asteraceae family. It has a long history of use in traditional medicine to relieve coughs and other upper respiratory ailments. We report a near telomere-to-telomere (T2T) reference genome assembly for Tussilago farfara , constructed by integrating PacBio HiFi long reads, Oxford Nanopore Technologies (ONT) ultra-long reads, MGI short reads, and high-throughput chromatin conformation capture (Hi-C) data. The resulting 1.60 Gb genome assembly with approximately 94.92% of the sequences anchored onto 30 pseudochromosomes. Notably, this assembly is exceptionally contiguous, featuring only two gaps and capturing 50 of the 60 telomeres. Its exceptional completeness and accuracy are further supported by a BUSCO score of 99.50% and a consensus Quality Value (QV) of 68.16. Genome annotation revealed 51,235 protein-coding genes, 98.67% of which were functionally annotated. This high-quality reference genome provides a robust genetic foundation for elucidating the biosynthetic pathways of key medicinal compounds and will profoundly advance future evolutionary and functional genomics studies of coltsfoot.