Terpenes play key roles in plant growth, defense, and environmental interactions. Terpenes are also economically important because of their use in industrial materials, pharmaceutical products, and as biofuel precursors. Collectively, hundreds of terpene compounds have been characterized from eucalypts, a group of 900 tree species belonging to the Myrtaceae (myrtle) family and containing the closely-related genera Angophora, Corymbia and Eucalyptus. As part of a proposal by JBEI, the JGI worked on resequencing several eucalyptus genomes to establish the feasibility of genome wide association studies for genetic traits that are desirable from a biofuels production perspective. By using genomic database alignment tools, researchers searched for TPS genes in the eucalypt Corymbia citriodora. Learn more on the JGI website.
