Transcriptome Analysis Reveals Unique Relationships Among Species and Heritage of .

Relationships in the genus were obtained through transcriptome analysis. ( ssp. ), also known as finger millet, is an allotetraploid minor crop primarily grown in East Africa and India. Domesticated evolved from wild ( ssp. ) with the maternal genome donor largely supported to be ; however, the paternal genome donor remains elusive. We developed transcriptomes for six species from fully developed seedlings using Illumina technology and three assemblers (Trinity, Velvet, and SOAPdenovo2) with the redundancy-reducing EvidentialGene pipeline. Mapping reads to the chloroplast genes of all species detected fewer variants between and compared to all other species. Phylogenetic analysis further supports as the maternal parent of and , in addition to a close relationship between and , and between and , and as a separate group. A close relationship between and was unexpected considering they are reported to have distinct nuclear genomes, BB and CC, respectively. Further, it was expected that and would have a closer relationship considering they have similar nuclear genomes, AB and BB, respectively. A rethinking of the labeling of ancestral genomes of , , and is maybe needed based on this data.