Genomic profiling of dioecious Amaranthus species provides novel insights into species relatedness and sex genes

BACKGROUND: Amaranthus L. is a diverse genus consisting of domesticated, weedy, and non-invasive species distributed around the world. Nine species are dioecious, of which Amaranthus palmeri S. Watson and Amaranthus tuberculatus (Moq.) J.D. Sauer are troublesome weeds of agronomic crops in the USA and elsewhere. Shallow relationships among the dioecious Amaranthus species and the conservation of candidate genes within previously identified A. palmeri and A. tuberculatus male-specific regions of the Y (MSYs) in other dioecious species are poorly understood. In this study, seven genomes of dioecious amaranths were obtained by paired-end short-read sequencing and combined with short reads of seventeen species in the family Amaranthaceae from NCBI database. The species were phylogenomically analyzed to understand their relatedness. Genome characteristics for the dioecious species were evaluated and coverage analysis was used to investigate the conservation of sequences within the MSY regions. RESULTS: We provide genome size, heterozygosity, and ploidy level inference for seven newly sequenced dioecious Amaranthus species and two additional dioecious species from the NCBI database. We report a pattern of transposable element proliferation in the species, in which seven species had more Ty3 elements than copia elements while A. palmeri and A. watsonii had more copia elements than Ty3 elements, similar to the TE pattern in some monoecious amaranths. Using a Mash-based phylogenomic analysis, we accurately recovered taxonomic relationships among the dioecious Amaranthus species that were previously identified based on comparative morphology. Coverage analysis revealed eleven candidate gene models within the A. palmeri MSY region with male-enriched coverages, as well as regions on scaffold 19 with female-enriched coverage, based on A. watsonii read alignments. A previously reported FLOWERING LOCUS T (FT) within A. tuberculatus MSY contig was also found to exhibit male-enriched coverages for three species closely related to A. tuberculatus but not for A. watsonii reads. Additional characterization of the A. palmeri MSY region revealed that 78% of the region is made of repetitive elements, typical of a sex determination region with reduced recombination. CONCLUSIONS: The results of this study further increase our understanding of the relationships among the dioecious species of the Amaranthus genus as well as revealed genes with potential roles in sex function in the species. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12915-023-01539-9.