Executive summary: the maize genome project found 32,690 high confidence genes in the maize genome, MaizeGDB records only 1181 named genes in the maize genome (excluding genes carried in the small genomes of chloroplasts and mitochondria), or less than 4% of the number of identified genes.
What does it mean to be a named gene? Why is that number so low? Why are we still able to make reasonable guesses about the functions of genes that have been never been studied? The answers to these questions inside.
Goes into four answers to why we should celebrate the publication of the genome of the fourth grass ever sequenced (sometimes referred to either affectionately or derisively as the Arabidopsis of the plant world), along with some pretty pictures of the plant itself and a little basic genome analysis.
First, since I didn’t explicitly state it in my previous post, the paper on the longer lasting tomatoes developed by India’s National Institute for Plant Genome Research didn’t report any data on how the RNAi knock-down tomatoes actually taste.* The tomatoes are nearly twice as firm as tomatoes in which these genes are NOT knocked [...]
Author’s note: This would seem to be the week for vegetables I hated as a kid. Yesterday was onion, today tomato, if there’s a story about brinjal/eggplant in the next few days we’ll have hit all the big ones. I was recently pointed to an early publication paper that went up on the Proceedings of [...]
A remarkable number of vegetables are actually produced by a handful of brassica species (called cruciferous vegetables), as covered by Greg over at Pie-ence. The wonderful thing about having so many different kinds of vegetables within a single, inter-fertile species is that the Brassicas are a constant source of “new” vegetables. Highlights of this post include: The CAL gene and its role in differentiating cauliflower from broccoli, reminiscing about broccoflower, and the “flower sprout” the newest breed of cruciferous vegetable.
There was a recent paper in Science about the mapping of the Artemisia annua genome. I’ve seen several people interpret this as another genome sequence. It’s hard to blame anyone for this confusion given headlines like “Scientists map the maize genome!” to describe the sequencing of the maize genome. So what’s the difference between a sequenced genome and a mapped genome? I’m glad you asked!
Here’s the key statistic: The maize genome paper estimated that roughly a quarter of maize genes are currently retained as duplicate pairs from maize’s whole genome duplication, while the soybean paper estimates just over half of soybean genes are similarly retained after soybean’s (apparently slightly older) duplication. <– had it buried at the end of [...]
After already needing to correct this post, I must now invalidate the whole thing. Seems I’ve been taken in by a premature press release that was turned into reliable sounding articles on news sites and was then picked up by blogs like mine that took the those sites to be credible sources. It’s a big [...]
A new science paper came out a couple of days ago on Devil Facial Tumor Disease. Among other things it confirms the disease is caused by a single cancer cell line spread from one Tasmanian Devil to another. Which raised the question of whether this tumor is actually a new species. Details inside.
From The Hindu: Humans are inadvertently manipulating bird genetics by innocently providing birds with feeders in winter, according to findings by German researchers. Over less than 30 generations, birds visiting British and European gardens in winter have evolved different-shaped wings and beaks, the scientists say. In time, they could eventually become a distinct species. The [...]
