Source: OSU press release In a collaborative effort spanning five continents, scientists have announced the complete sequencing of one of the world's most widely planted trees, Eucalyptus grandis. Used for fuel and timber, the species commonly known as flooded gum or rose gum is valued for fast growth and straight grain. Often grown as a hybrid, it is one of more than 500 species of eucalyptus trees and shrubs that provide a renewable source of fiber, pulp, biofuel material, and medicinal and industrial oils. The accomplishment was published today in the scientific journal Nature.

Source: Department of Botany and Plant Pathology News Common bread wheat with a genome that is ~5 times the size of the human genome is a hexaploid, with three times more number of chromosomes compared to ancestral diploid genomes. This means that the bread wheat combines three different genomes and can make studying the genetic makeup of modern wheat difficult. Therefore, "studying ancestral genomes such as the wheat A, B and D genomes individually provide a baseline reference and new opportunities to investigate the genetic contribution of each of these genomes that lead to the development of bread wheat”. “It also gives us an opportunity to identify novel and beneficial stress tolerant genes in the wild ancestral genomes, that can be introduced into common bread wheat for improving varieties” added Jaiswal.

"Did you know that there are millions of DNA building blocks encoded in the genome of a plant? How can scientists possibly study this vast amount of data? With computers! Come and explore the tools of modern biology used to examine the complexities of DNA. This camp will involve hands-on activities where you will extract genetic material from a plant, assemble DNA sequences, identify genes using computers, examine your plant’s genome with visualization software, and test and look at your results in the laboratory. No programming skills required!"

Immediate opening is available for a recent PhD graduate (0-3 years after PhD award) to apply for a full-time postdoctoral scholar position. The biocuration would involve annotating plant metabolic, signaling and regulatory pathways for developing an online Plant Pathway database.

We are pleased to announce that the latest release of the Plant Ontology, version #20, is available on our browser at http://www.plantontology.org/. This full release features the addition of 48 new terms, for both the Plant Anatomical Entity (44) and Plant Structure Development Stage (4) branches. This Release also includes new and updated annotation data for: rice (Oryza sativa) Arabidopsis thaliana and cotton (Gossypium hirsutum). Major revisions to the plant anatomical entity branch of the ontology include new and revised terms and definitions to describe:

The genome of cyclosporine (synonym: cyclosporin) drug producing fungus Tolypocladium inflatum was published recently by Bushley et al. (2013), in the journal PLOS Genetics. The genome sequencing and its annotation discovered a cyclosporin biosynthesis associated metabolite gene cluster. "Cyclosporin is a powerful immunosupressant with a specific action on T-lymphocyte cells.

Nearly half of the world's population acquires their staple calories from rice. While the Green revolution has witnessed substantial increases in the production, availability and global per capita consumption of rice, FAO estimates 870 million of the world population to be still hungry. To increase production and especially to alleviate effect of climate change on rice production it is imperative that rice breeding moves beyond the Green Revolution and incorporate modern genomics based methods.

Plant biologists looking for online, freely-available pathway resources that allow them to add, edit and download known and novel published pathways in plants have a new option: the WikiPathways Plants Portal (a collaboration between WikiPathways, the Jaiswal Lab at Oregon State University and the Gramene database).

The June issue of Plant Journal features the new draft sequence of a 'desi-type' chickpea genome. You might recall that another group recently published a draft whole genome shotgun sequence of a 'kabuli' chickpea variety in Nature Biotechnology. You can read an interesting commentary on these on the AoB blog .