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  • The coffee genome provides insight into the convergent evolution of caffeine biosynthesis.

The coffee genome provides insight into the convergent evolution of caffeine biosynthesis.

Science (New York, N.Y.) (2014-09-06)
France Denoeud, Lorenzo Carretero-Paulet, Alexis Dereeper, Gaëtan Droc, Romain Guyot, Marco Pietrella, Chunfang Zheng, Adriana Alberti, François Anthony, Giuseppe Aprea, Jean-Marc Aury, Pascal Bento, Maria Bernard, Stéphanie Bocs, Claudine Campa, Alberto Cenci, Marie-Christine Combes, Dominique Crouzillat, Corinne Da Silva, Loretta Daddiego, Fabien De Bellis, Stéphane Dussert, Olivier Garsmeur, Thomas Gayraud, Valentin Guignon, Katharina Jahn, Véronique Jamilloux, Thierry Joët, Karine Labadie, Tianying Lan, Julie Leclercq, Maud Lepelley, Thierry Leroy, Lei-Ting Li, Pablo Librado, Loredana Lopez, Adriana Muñoz, Benjamin Noel, Alberto Pallavicini, Gaetano Perrotta, Valérie Poncet, David Pot, Priyono, Michel Rigoreau, Mathieu Rouard, Julio Rozas, Christine Tranchant-Dubreuil, Robert VanBuren, Qiong Zhang, Alan C Andrade, Xavier Argout, Benoît Bertrand, Alexandre de Kochko, Giorgio Graziosi, Robert J Henry, Jayarama, Ray Ming, Chifumi Nagai, Steve Rounsley, David Sankoff, Giovanni Giuliano, Victor A Albert, Patrick Wincker, Philippe Lashermes
PMID25190796
ABSTRACT

Coffee is a valuable beverage crop due to its characteristic flavor, aroma, and the stimulating effects of caffeine. We generated a high-quality draft genome of the species Coffea canephora, which displays a conserved chromosomal gene order among asterid angiosperms. Although it shows no sign of the whole-genome triplication identified in Solanaceae species such as tomato, the genome includes several species-specific gene family expansions, among them N-methyltransferases (NMTs) involved in caffeine production, defense-related genes, and alkaloid and flavonoid enzymes involved in secondary compound synthesis. Comparative analyses of caffeine NMTs demonstrate that these genes expanded through sequential tandem duplications independently of genes from cacao and tea, suggesting that caffeine in eudicots is of polyphyletic origin.