Apple genome

In 2010, an Italian-led consortium announced they had sequenced the first complete genome of an apple in collaboration with horticultural genomicists at Washington State University, using 'Golden Delicious'. The apple genome has approximately 57,000 genes, which was the highest number of any plant genome studied at the time, and more genes than the human genome which has about 25,000 genes. The modern apple has 17 chromosomes which were found to be derived from an ancestor with 9 chromosomes that experienced genome-wide duplication. The genome sequence also provided proof that Malus sieversii was the wild ancestor of the domestic apple—an issue that had been long-debated in the scientific community.

In 2017 a new and higher quality whole genome sequence (WGS) for a double-haploid strain of the Golden Delicious variety of apple was published. This new sequence revealed a genome size of 651 Mb and 42,140 protein-coding genes. 60% of the apple’s genome is made up of transposable elements.