Two telomere-to-telomere, gap-free genome assemblies and comparisons revealed the conserved key genes associated with sugar accumulation in Rubus genus

Two telomere-to-telomere, gap-free genomes for Rubus species were sequenced and assembled by using an integrative approach that combined ultra-long reads from Oxford Nanopore Technology (ONT), PacBio high-fidelity (HiFi) long reads, Illumina paired-end short reads, and High-throughput Chromosome Conformation Capture (Hi-C) data, resulted in the first gap-free reference genomes of the Rubus genus. By comparative genomics and transcriptomics, we revealed the conserved key genes associated with sugar accumulation in Rubus genus, providing candidate target sites for improving fruit quality in Rubus. We also established a database for documenting all the genomic, transcriptomic, and phenotypic data generated in this study.