Discussion

Telomere length has become an important tool for studying species’ response to environmental stress, and there is a growing need to estimate telomere length rapidly and efficiently for model and non-model organisms. Recent advances in WGS and bioinformatic approaches have created new opportunities for telomere length assessment . In this study, we used whole-genome resequencing data to estimate telomere length for 100 Populus genotypes and compared our results to traditional qPCR measurements. We identified three bioinformatic approaches that were appropriate for telomere length assessments in plants. While average telomere length estimates varied across bioinformatic approaches, estimates for the same genotype across approaches were strongly correlated (r = 0.86 to 0.99). Furthermore, our results suggest that WGS provides a comparable approach to estimating telomere length variation relative to traditional qPCR . Indeed, correlation between telomere estimates for qPCR and WGS, particularly where genome coverage is accounted for, suggests that values are comparable. Our study demonstrates that WGS is an efficient and rapid approach for assessing telomere length in plants. This has potential applications for plant breeding and conservation management where assessment of telomere length change acts as a biomarker to indicate individuals response to environmental stress.