James and the Giant Corn Genetics: Studying the Source Code of Nature

August 29, 2010

Apple Genome

Filed under: Uncategorized — James @ 12:20 pm

Once more, science by press release. Word of the apple (Malus domestica) genome comes first from popular press stories around the web, although there is a mention of a Nature Genetics article, so hopefully more details will be forthcoming.

-The popular press stories do mention a tetraploidy in Apple ~65 million years ago, but that’s been the one useful bit of information I’ve come across so far.

Apples are part of the rosid family, which contains the majority of publicly available plant genomes. That’s both a good and a bad thing. The apple genome won’t provide insight into a whole new branch of the plant family tree, but on the other hand, it’s closely enough related to many other sequenced species to enable more detailed comparative genomics.

If you know where to download a copy of the apple genome, or come across the paper describing it, drop me a line and I’ll add the information to this post. Otherwise I’ll revisit this story in a few days, and see if enough information has become available to let me add apple to our list of sequenced plant genomes.

h/t to @mem_somerville

4 Comments »

  1. […] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Sharon Padget, AgBlogFeed. AgBlogFeed said: Apple Genome: Once more, science by press release. Word of the apple (Malus domestica) genome comes first f… http://bit.ly/9o1LNF #agchat […]

    Pingback by Tweets that mention Apple Genome – James and the Giant Corn -- Topsy.com — August 29, 2010 @ 1:41 pm

  2. We contributed to the apple genome project and are in the process of sequencing double haploid golden delicious, double haploid pear and sweet cherry. The assembles for these genomes are ongoing and we hope to release them by the middle of next year along with a publication if possible. Just saw your list of genomes being sequenced. I thought it might be good to put this information in your hands. Thanks.

    Comment by Amit Dhingra — August 29, 2010 @ 7:03 pm

  3. Thank you for the heads up Amit. Would you mind if I add those genome projects to our list as “in progress” genomes?

    I imagine the cherry and pear genomes will be of great interest to compare to the peach and apple genomes respectively. Sort of like the studies currently being done between Arabidopsis thaliana and Arabidopsis lyrata.

    Best of luck with your assembly and annotation!

    Comment by James — August 30, 2010 @ 7:46 am

  4. Yes James. That would be great if you list them as “in progress” genomes. It would be interesting to compare all these Rosaceae genomes in the coming days.

    Thanks,

    Comment by Amit Dhingra — August 30, 2010 @ 9:40 pm

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