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Abstract
Cis-regulatory elements (CREs) such as insulators have been demonstrated to shield genes from the effects of transcriptional misregulation due to nearby promoter elements of neighboring genes. These elements will be increasingly important for controlling expression in future multi-gene crop traits. In this study, we aim to identify CREs such as insulator, terminator, bidirectional promoter, and unidirectional promoter elements in the Utricularia gibba (bladderwort) genome. This organism is an exceptional model for CRE detection due to its extremely small genome size. The U. gibba genome used in this study was Illumina sequenced, assembled and annotated. RNA-seq data was then used to detect pairs of independently expressed genes genome-wide. Intergenic regions between independently expressed gene-pairs were subsequently used for CRE detection. Putative insulator, terminator, unidirectional promoter and bidirectional promoter sequences were identified and filtered based on the presence of conserved elements in angiosperm genome alignments. The candidate CREs will undergo in vivo validation by collaborators.