May 25, 2014. In an article titled, “Genome sequence of the cultivated cotton Gossypium arboretum,” published online 18 May 2014 in the current (May) issue of Nature Genetics, the three lead authors, Yu-Xian Zhu, Jun Wang, Shuxun Yu along with 28 associates reported the genomic sequence of the cultivated Asiatic cotton, G. arboretum. The authors sequenced and assembled the Gossypium arboreum (AA; 2n = 26) genome, a putative contributor of the A subgenome. They obtained a total of 193.6 Gb of clean sequence covering the genome by 112.6-fold. They found that 68.5% of the genome is occupied by repetitive DNA sequences. The number of predicted protein-coding genes was 41,330 in G. arboreum. The results of their investigation revealed that two whole-genome duplications were shared by G. arboreum and Gossypium raimondii before the species diverged for speciation. Researchers found that insertions of long terminal repeats in the past 5 million years led to the twofold difference in the sizes of these genomes. Comparative transcriptome studies showed the key role of the nucleotide binding site (NBS)-encoding gene family in resistance to Verticillium dahliae and the involvement of ethylene in the development of cotton fiber cells.