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Abstract Aegilops tauschii is the donor of the D subgenome of hexaploid wheat and a valuable genetic resource for wheat improvement. Several reference-quality genome sequences have been reported for A. tauschii accession AL8/78. A new genome sequence assembly (Aet v6.0) built from long Pacific Biosciences HiFi reads and employing an optical genome map constructed with a new technology is reported here for this accession. The N50 contig length of 31.81 Mb greatly exceeded that of the previous AL8/78 genome sequence assembly (Aet v5.0). Of 1,254 super-scaffolds, 92, comprising 98% of the total super-scaffold length, were anchored on a high-resolution genetic map, and pseudomolecules were assembled. The number of gaps in the pseudomolecules was reduced from 52,910 in Aet v5.0 to 351 in Aet v6.0. Gene models were transferred from the Aet v5.0 assembly into the Aet v6.0 assembly. A total of 40,447 putative orthologous gene pairs were identified between the Aet v6.0 and Chinese Spring wheat IWGSC RefSer v2.1 D-subgenome pseudomolecules. Orthologous gene pairs were used to compare the structure of the A. tauschii and wheat D-subgenome pseudomolecules. A total of 223 structural differences were identified. They included 44 large differences in sequence orientation and 25 differences in sequence location. A technique for discriminating between assembly errors and real structural variation between closely related genomes is suggested. 

Our brain perceives the world by exploiting multisensory cues to extract information about various aspects of external stimuli. The sensory cues from the same stimulus should be integrated to improve perception, and otherwise segregated to distinguish different stimuli. In reality, however, the brain faces the challenge of recognizing stimuli without knowing in advance the sources of sensory cues. To address this challenge, we propose that the brain conducts integration and segregation concurrently with complementary neurons. Studying the inference of heading-direction via visual and vestibular cues, we develop a network model with two reciprocally connected modules modeling interacting visual-vestibular areas. In each module, there are two groups of neurons whose tunings under each sensory cue are either congruent or opposite. We show that congruent neurons implement integration, while opposite neurons compute cue disparity information for segregation, and the interplay between two groups of neurons achieves efficient multisensory information processing.