Long-read sequencing uncovers the adaptive topography of a carnivorous plant genome

Significance Carnivorous plants capture and digest animal prey for nutrition. In addition to being carnivorous, the humped bladderwort plant, Utricularia gibba , has the smallest reliably assembled flowering plant genome. We generated an updated genome assembly based on single-molecule sequencing to address questions regarding the bladderwort’s genome adaptive landscape. Among encoded genes, we segregated those that could be confidently distinguished as having derived from small-scale versus whole-genome duplication processes and showed that conspicuous expansions of gene families useful for prey trapping and processing derived mainly from localized duplication events. Such small-scale, tandem duplicates are therefore revealed as essential elements in the bladderwort’s carnivorous adaptation.