Population Genomics and Genetic Diversity of Prosopis cineraria in the United Arab Emirates: Insights for Conservation in Arid Ecosystems
Jul 16, 2025·
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Anestis Gkanogiannis
Salama Rashed Obaid Almansoori
Maher Kabshawi
Mohammed Shahid
Saif Almansoori
Hifzur Rahman
Augusto Becerra Lopez-Lavalle
Abstract
Prosopis cineraria (L.) Druce is a keystone tree species in the arid and semi-arid regions of West and South Asia, with critical ecological, cultural, and conservation significance. In the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and other regions of the Arabian Peninsula, this beneficial tree is called Ghaf. Despite its importance, genomic resources and population-level diversity data for the tree remain limited. Here, we present the first comprehensive population genomics study of Ghaf based on whole-genome resequencing of 204 individual trees collected across the UAE. Following Single-Nucleotide Polymorphism (SNP) discovery and stringent filtering, we analyzed 57,183 high-quality LD-pruned SNPs to assess population structure, diversity, and gene flow. Principal component analysis (PCA), sparse non-negative matrix factorization (sNMF), and discriminant analysis of principal components (DAPC) revealed four well-defined genetic clusters, broadly corresponding to geographic origins. The genetic diversity varied significantly among the groups, with observed heterozygosity (Ho), inbreeding coefficients (F), and nucleotide diversity (π) showing strong population-specific trends. Genome-wide fixation index FST scans identified multiple highly differentiated genomic regions, enriched for genes involved in stress response, transport, and signaling. Functional enrichment using Gene Ontology (GO), Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG), and Pfam annotations indicated overrepresentation of protein kinase activity, ATP binding, and hormone signaling pathways. TreeMix analysis revealed gene flow into one of the genetic clusters from both others, suggesting historical admixture and geographic connectivity. This work provides foundational insights into the population genomic profile of P. cineraria, supporting conservation planning, restoration strategies, and long-term genetic monitoring in arid ecosystems.
Type
Publication
Plants, 14(19)
Authors
Senior AI/ML and genomics practitioner
Senior AI/ML and genomics practitioner with ~15 years building open-source, production-grade tools for large-scale biological data. Maintainer of multiple Bioconductor packages (fastreeR, metabinR, jvecfor), and author of agentic, LLM-driven tooling that runs reproducible bioinformatics workflows from natural-language requests.
Broad multi-omics background spanning genome assembly and annotation, population genomics, large-scale NGS and functional-genomics analysis, and metagenomics, backed by reproducible HPC software and end-to-end program leadership. Currently focused on bringing modern AI — embeddings, deep learning, and LLM-based agents — to making complex omics datasets faster and easier to interrogate.