Genome sequencing of Sorghum completed
The complete genome of drought tolerant sorghum has been sequenced by the scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Joint Genome Institute (JGI) and several partner institutions. Apart from being drought tolerant ( It needs only half the water it takes to grow corn ) there are many other features like being a major food and fodder plant with high potential as a bioenergy crop makes sorghum a valuable crop . Another important aspect of sorghum is provides an example of a plant that carries out the C4 type of photosynthesis.This different kind of photo synthetic pathway, normally seen among plants growing in conditions of high temperature and light intensity, and low water availability, is considered to be more efficient in fixing carbon dioxide than the conventional C3 route that is found,for instance, in rice and wheat.
The details of the sequence was published in jan 29 issue of Nature ,which will help scientists in optimizing sorghum and other crops not only for food and fodder use, but also for biofuels production.
Plant DNA is often difficult to analyze because of large sections of repetitive sequence and sorghum was no different. With approximately 730 million nucleotides, sorghum’s genome is nearly 75 percent larger than the size of rice. Sorghum’s is only the second grass genome to be completely sequenced to date, after rice.Researchers used the whole genome “shotgun” method of sequencing first pioneered in the Human Genome Project. In this method, short random DNA fragments are partially sequenced and then analyzed by powerful supercomputers to reconstruct the original genome sequence. The repetitive sections and the length of the sorghum genome made assembling this “puzzle” a highly challenging computational problem.
Related press releases :
Genome sequence shows sorghum’s immense potential
Sequencing of sorghum genome completed
Scientists publish complete genetic blueprint of key biofuels crop
Original article :
The Sorghum bicolor genome and the diversification of grasses
Andrew H. Paterson, John E. Bowers, Rémy Bruggmann, Inna Dubchak, Jane Grimwood, Heidrun Gundlach, Georg Haberer, Uffe Hellsten, Therese Mitros, Alexander Poliakov, Jeremy Schmutz, Manuel Spannagl, Haibao Tang, Xiyin Wang, Thomas Wicker, Arvind K. Bharti, Jarrod Chapman, F. Alex Feltus, Udo Gowik, Igor V. Grigoriev, Eric Lyons, Christopher A. Maher, Mihaela Martis, Apurva Narechania, Robert P. Otillar, Bryan W. Penning, Asaf A. Salamov, Yu Wang, Lifang Zhang, Nicholas C. Carpita, Michael Freeling, Alan R. Gingle, C. Thomas Hash, Beat Keller, Patricia Klein, Stephen Kresovich, Maureen C. McCann, Ray Ming, Daniel G. Peterson, Mehboob-ur-Rahman, Doreen Ware, Peter Westhoff, Klaus F. X. Mayer, Joachim Messing & Daniel S. Rokhsar
doi:10.1038/nature07723
Image Credit : C. Thomas Hash, ICRISAT and
Roy Kaltschmidt, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
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