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

February 22, 2010

How many maize/corn genes have actually been studied? (Not a lot)

Filed under: Genetics,Plants,research stories — Tags: , , , , — James @ 4:42 pm

When the maize genome paper came out last November (see the summary of this blog’s maize day coverage) it included information on 32,690 genes within the maize genome.  These were the genes which the researchers involved in sequencing the genome were very confident really were genes. And by themselves those 30,000+ genes put the maize genome way ahead of our own. Of course EVERY plant genome ever sequenced has contained more genes than we do, so you’d think by now this wouldn’t be news any more. We’re not the most genetically complex creatures on the planet, and we’ll just have to learn to live with that fact.

But where was I? Oh yeah, gene counts. 32,690 high confidence genes*. Of those, how many have been studied individually? (more…)

February 16, 2010

Newer Tighter CoGe-MaizeGDB demo

Filed under: Computers and Coding,research stories — Tags: , , — James @ 1:08 am

I invested in a new video capture program that lets me record voice overs in real time. There are a few more ums and uhhs but my voice and the action on screen are in much better sync, and I don’t find myself rushing to keep up with the movements of my own mouse or trying to fill apparently dead time while nothing happens on screen. The new video is also two minutes and fifteen seconds shorter, dropping below the psychologically important 5 minute barrier, above which watching a video starts to feel a lot more like work, and I get to show off two new features (visually flagged tandems, and predictions of where a gene would have been before it was lost) that we’re still in the process of rolling out.

Sorry to harp on the same topic a second time, this video is just SO MUCH BETTER than the previous one and I needed to show it off. 😉

February 9, 2010

MaizeGDB and CoGe: A Beautiful Friendship

Filed under: biology,Computers and Coding,research stories — Tags: , , , , , — James @ 2:50 am

Editor’s note: I have a new shorter, better, tutorial, here.

One of the earliest fruits of my work to define relationships between syntenic genes* was a list of sorghum genes and corn genes in one or both of the two related regions of the corn genome (each region in sorghum corresponds to two in corn because the ancestors of corn completely doubled their genome in the time after the ancestors of corn and sorghum went their separate ways.)

But this is not the post where I explain my research projects. That post would be confusing and densely written at the best of times, which two AM in the morning certainly isn’t. Tonight my goal is simply to introduce the embedded video below, which explains how any researchers who want to can check out the relationships I’ve identified between genes in the two duplicate regions of maize, and the genes of the sorghum genome can do so using the MaizeGDB genome browser, and CoGe’s own GenomeViewer application. Video below. If you’re going to watch, I recommend selecting the highest resolution youtube offers you. (more…)

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