The automated eukaryotic pangenome pipeline EukPan reveals accessory genome differentiation beyond core-gene phylogeny in Aspergillus oryzae

Abstract

Pangenome analysis reveals recurrent gene-content variation beyond a single reference genome, but its application to eukaryotes is constrained by inconsistent gene annotation. ANNEVO predicts gene models from genome FASTA assemblies without RNA-seq data. We developed EukPan, an automated post-annotation pipeline that standardizes GFF/GTF files, selects representative isoforms, constructs proteomes, infers orthogroups, builds a concatenated single-copy core-protein alignment, and summarizes shared accessory orthogroups while excluding orthogroups detected in only one genome. Applied with ANNEVO to 123 Aspergillus oryzae genomes, EukPan identified 11,245 core and 4,407 shared accessory orthogroups. The core-protein phylogeny broadly recovered the reported A-H classification, whereas accessory-genome analyses clearly separated the 33 group-A strains from the other 90 strains. Directional analysis identified 62 group-A-associated and 158 group-A-depleted orthogroups, with major facilitator superfamily (MFS) transporter and fungal Zn2Cys6 transcription-factor domains prominent in the depleted set. Among 93 orthogroups present in all non-A strains and absent from all group-A strains, 59 mapped to 10 segments of RIB40, the standard A. oryzae reference genome and a non-A (group-F) strain. EukPan therefore enables reproducible, coordinated core- and accessory-pangenome analysis from eukaryotic genome assemblies.