In Nature, a team led by researchers at the University of Texas at Austin, the HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology, and DOE Joint Genome Institute has produced a high-quality reference sequence of the complex switchgrass genome. Building off this work, researchers at all four DOE Bioenergy Research Centers—the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center, the Center for … Read more »
JGI Helps Find Shattering Gene in Wild Setaria Populations
Innumerable road trips to collect hundreds of weedy green millet (Setaria viridis) plants have resulted in a Nature Biotechnology paper from researchers at the DOE Joint Genome Institute, the Danforth Center and the HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology. The team generated genome sequences for nearly 600 green millet plants and released a very high quality reference S. viridis genome sequence. Analysis of these plant genome sequences also led researchers to identify a gene related to seed dispersal in wild populations for the first time. Learn more here on the JGI website
JGI Scientists Help Unlock Structure of Shrub Willow Sex Chromosome
Shrub willow Salix purpurea is a potential biofuel feedstock of interest to the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). Understanding the mechanisms by which they reproduce can help guide breeding efforts. However, scientists are still dissecting its sex-linked traits. For the first time, a shrub willow sex chromosome has been sequenced with sufficient resolution to discover that it shares a structure that’s also found in the mammalian Y chromosome.
Read more on the JGI website.
JGI Assembles Major Cotton Genomes Now on Phytozome
A multi-institutional team including JGI researchers has now sequenced and assembled the genomes of the five major cotton lineages. Senior authors of the paper published April 20, 2020 in Nature Genetics include Jane Grimwood and Jeremy Schmutz of JGI’s Plant Program, both faculty investigators at the HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology. “The goal has been for all this new cotton work, and even the original cotton project was to try to bring in molecular methods of breeding into cotton,” said Schmutz, who heads JGI’s Plant Program. The high quality reference genomes of all five cotton lineages are available for comparative analysis on JGI’s plant data portal Phytozome
Go here to read the full story on the JGI website.
JGI Helps Study Local Adaptation in Switchgrass
The perennial grass switchgrass (Panicum virgatum) is a candidate bioenergy feedstock, with deep roots that allow it to access nutrients easily from a variety of soils and a higher tolerance for extreme water conditions. To better understand the genetic basis of local adaptation, researchers established community gardens of switchgrass plants in 10 different field sites on a north-south gradient across the United States. Early results reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences from these large-scale field tests conducted over two years reveal fewer tradeoffs in plant fitness and adaptation than expected. Click here to read the full science highlight on the JGI website.
Was this page useful?
Send
