Japanese Scientists Complete Genome Sequence of Eggplant

Researchers from Japan's Kazusa DNA Research Institute and National Agriculture and Food Research Organization (NARO) Institute of Vegetable and Tea Science (NIVTS) report for the first time the completed genome sequence of eggplant (Solanum melongena L.).

Clustering analysis of the predicted genes of eggplant along with the genes of three other solanaceous plants as well as Arabidopsis thaliana revealed that, of the 35,000 clusters generated, 4,018 were exclusively composed of eggplant genes that would perhaps confer eggplant-specific traits, they said. They also found that between eggplant and tomato, 16, 573 pairs of genes were deduced to be orthologous (homologous sequences descended from the same ancestral sequence), and 9,489 eggplant scaffolds could be mapped onto the tomato genome.

"The detailed comparative analysis of the eggplant and tomato genomes will facilitate our understanding of the genomic architecture of solanaceous plants, which will contribute to cultivation and further utilization of these crops," said the researchers.

The results of the genome study are published in the journal DNA Research as an open access paper. It is available at: http://dnaresearch.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2014/09/16/dnares.dsu027.short?rss=1#aff-1.