Chromosome-scale assembly of yeast genomes using enzyme-free, dense optical genome mapping.

Dense optical genome mapping achieves chromosome-scale assembly of yeast genomes, revealing structural variations and repetitive regions up to 500 kbp in size.

• Why it matters: Accurate assembly of eukaryotic genomes remains difficult due to large repetitive elements and complex chromosomal structures, limiting insights into genome organization and disease mechanisms.
• What they did: The study extended the Dense Optical Genome Mapping (DOGMA) pipeline to yeast genomes, utilizing a competitive binding-based dense labeling protocol to generate continuous fluorescence intensity profiles along DNA molecules.
• The result: This approach successfully reconstructed comprehensive, chromosome-scale assemblies of Saccharomyces cerevisiae and S. pombe, capturing structural variations and establishing a scalable framework for complex genomes, including human applications.