FGMP: assessing fungal genome completeness and gene content

Background Inexpensive high-throughput DNA sequencing has democratized access to genetic information for most organisms so that research utilizing a genome or transcriptome of an organism is not limited to model systems. However, the quality of the assemblies of sampled genomes can vary greatly which hampers utility for comparisons and meaningful interpretation. The uncertainty of the completeness of a given genome sequence can limit feasibility of asserting patterns of high rates of gene loss reported in many lineages. Results We propose a computational framework and sequence resource for assessing completeness of fungal genomes called FGMP (Fungal Genome Mapping Project). Our approach is based on evolutionary conserved sets of proteins and DNA elements and is applicable to various types of genomic data. We present a comparison of FGMP and state-of-the-art methods for genome completeness assessment utilizing 246 genome assemblies of fungi. We discuss genome assembly improvements/degradations in 57 cases where assemblies have been updated, as recorded by NCBI assembly archive. Conclusion FGMP is an accurate tool for quantifying level of completion from fungal genomic data. It is particularly useful for non-model organisms without reference genomes and can be used directly on unassembled reads, which can help reducing genome sequencing costs.