A genome of a flowering plant may pave the way to improving the health and cultivation of major food crops.
Researchers from the University of Florida, led by Doug Soltis from the Florida Museum of National History, have sequenced the genome of a flowering plant known as Amborella. The genome sequence contains data on why flowers have existed for such a long time and possibly offering clues that can improve the production of major food crops.
Researchers believe that the genome for Amborella provided the first insight how flowers differ in terms of genetic construction with other members of the plant kingdom. The plant used for the study, also known as Amborella trichopoda is an indigent flowering plant from the New Caledonia in the South Pacific. What makes this species unique is that it is the only surviving plant with evolutionary lineage from the last known ancestor of all flowering plants.
“Genome doubling may offer an explanation to Darwin’s ‘abominable mystery’ — the apparently abrupt proliferation of new species of flowering plants in fossil records dating to the Cretaceous period,” Soltis stated. “When genome doubling occurred, some duplicated genes were lost over time but others took on new functions, including contributions to the development of floral organs.”
Comparative analysis for the Amborella genome are providing researches with a new paradigm to look into how genetics play a role in the traits of specific plant types. In the case of Amborella, researchers are keen on finding out why Amborella has certain traits that non-flowering plants don’t. Once they succeed in isolating this piece of data, the results could be applied to non-flowering plants, thus improving their production and longevity.
The studies for graphing Amborella’s genome are part of the project funded by the National Science Foundation. The project is done collaboratively with experts from University of Georgia, University of Buffalo, and University of California, Riverside.
