Davis, California
December 17, 2008
Thanks to a three-year $6.8
million grant from the National Science Foundation,
UC Davis researchers are
working on a groundbreaking plant genome project that could
speed up the development of wheat varieties with improved grain
quality and nutrition, higher yield, resistance to pests and
diseases, and tolerance of adverse climate conditions.
Led by geneticist Jan Dvorak from the UC Davis Department of
Plant Sciences, the project received the largest award from the
NSF Plant Genome Program this year. It seeks to construct a
physical map of one of the three genomes making up the
chromosome complement of wheat -- a task far tougher than
mapping the human genome.
"Unlike the mammalian genomes, genomes in higher plants differ
enormously in size," Dvorak said. "Each of the three wheat
genomes, for example, is an order of magnitude larger than the
genome of rice.
We have never had the technology to physically map and sequence
huge genomes such as those of wheat."
A physical map is a representation of the order of genes and
other landmarks along a chromosome. To construct a physical map,
genomic DNA is fragmented, and fragments are cloned and
"fingerprinted."
Overlaps between fingerprints are used to identify neighboring
DNA fragments, arranging them into a contiguous sequence
corresponding to the DNA sequence in the chromosome. Scientists
can then determine the location of genes and other markers in
these fragments and sequence them.
"Instead of producing a physical map of wheat chromosomes
directly, the chromosomes of Aegilops tauschii, one of the three
ancestors of wheat and the source of its D genome, will be
mapped first," Dvorak said. "These maps will then be used as
templates in physical mapping of individual chromosomes of the
wheat D genome, which is one of the specific objectives of this
project."
While it will take years and further studies before the full
wheat genomic sequence will be available to the research
community, NSF funders say this project is a vital first step.
The project will include sponsoring student internships and
workshops for other scientists in fingerprinting and physical
mapping as well as creating a public repository of all the data
and its analysis.
"The knowledge from this project will be helpful in all aspects
of wheat breeding and biotechnology because it will accelerate
the discovery and isolation of economically important genes,"
Dvorak said. "The project will also advance understanding of the
evolution and the global organization of large plant genomes."
The project includes UC Davis investigators Ming-Cheng Luo and
Patrick McGuire, and Olin Anderson from the U.S. Department of
Agriculture/ARS in Albany, Calif., who also holds an adjunct
appointment at UC Davis. It also involves Bikram Gill from
Kansas State University, Doreen Ware from Cold Spring Harbor
Laboratory in New York, and Jaroslav Dolezel from the Institute
of Experimental Botany in the Czech Republic.
The NSF began in 1998 making annual grant awards through its
Plant Genome Research Program, dedicated to advancing
understanding of the structure, organization and function of
plant genomes that are important to agriculture, the
environment, energy and health.
For 100 years, UC Davis has engaged in teaching, research and
public service that matter to California and transform the
world. Located close to the state capital, UC Davis has 31,000
students, an annual research budget that exceeds $500 million, a
comprehensive health system and 13 specialized research centers.
The university offers interdisciplinary graduate study and more
than 100 undergraduate majors in four colleges -- Agricultural
and Environmental Sciences, Biological Sciences, Engineering,
and Letters and Science -- and advanced degrees from five
professional schools: Education, Law, Management, Medicine, and
Veterinary Medicine. The UC Davis School of Medicine and UC
Davis Medical Center are located on the Sacramento campus near
downtown. |
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