The John Innes Centre
(JIC) has recently entered into a partnership with the
US Dept of Agriculture
(USDA) and Department of Energy
(DOE) to study the genome of the grass
Brachypodium as
part of the Joint Genome Institute’s Community Sequencing
Programme. The genetic information from this project will be
used as a template for analysing the much larger and more
complex genomes of wheat and barley which will accelerate
progress towards improving food production and help develop
sustainable production of biofuel from grass crops.
Brachypodium distachyon,
commonly known as Purple False Brome, is a close relative of
wheat, barley and forage grasses. Its small size, rapid
growth time and small genome size make it an ideal plant
model for the in-depth study of temperate grasses such as
wheat and barley. The JIC scientists, led by Prof Michael
Bevan and Prof John Snape, aim to generate a “map” or rough
outline of the
Brachypodium genome. This will then be used by
the DOE scientists to assemble and analyse the vast amount
of DNA sequence data. It can then be used to identify
important genes in food and fuel crops. This work will help
scientists to develop grasses into superior energy crops and
to improve grain crops and forage grasses that are the
foundations of our food supply.
“Our collaboration with
the DOE and USDA laboratories provides an important new
foundation for understanding and utilising members of the
grass family for food and fuel”, says Mike Bevan, Head of
the Cell and Developmental Biology Dept at the John Innes
Centre. “The
Brachypodium genome sequence will accelerate
progress in developing new generations of crop plants and
lead to new approaches to increase biomass productivity for
energy production and as a chemical feedstock. This work
will be an important contribution to developing a
sustainable energy economy”.
Work will start in late
2007 and the 300 mega-base genome should be completed
towards the end of 2008. All of the data will be placed in
the public domain so scientists worldwide can benefit from
this useful resource.
The
Joint Genome Institute (JGI), supported by the US Department
of Energy Office of Science, unites the expertise of five
national laboratories, Lawrence Berkeley, Lawrence
Livermore, Los Alamos, Oak Ridge, and Pacific Northwest,
along with the Stanford Human Genome Center to advance
genomics with the mission to enable scientific approaches to
challenges in energy and the environment. The Community
Sequencing Program (CSP) provides the scientific community
with access to high-throughput sequencing at the JGI.
JGI press release for this project:
Energy-rich
portfolio of new genome sequencing targets for U.S.
Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute
The
JIC, Norwich, UK is an independent, world-leading research
centre in plant and microbial sciences with over 800 staff.
JIC carries out high quality fundamental, strategic and
applied research to understand how plants and microbes work
at the molecular, cellular and genetic levels. The JIC also
trains scientists and students, collaborates with many other
research laboratories and communicates its science to
end-users and the general public. The JIC is grant-aided by
the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council.