Biofuel Model Crop Grass Sequenced

The bioenergy website reports the completion of the gene sequencing of a model grass by an international group of scientists under the "International Brachypodium Initiative". The full study is published in the journal, Nature (URL above). The genome-sequenced "model grass" is called Brachypodium distachyon, "the first member of the economically important Pooideae subfamily, which includes wheat and barley". Brachypodium is also said to have ideal qualities that make it a model "for functional genomics studies in temperate grasses, cereals, and dedicated biofuel crops such as Switchgrass": (a) ease of cultivation (simple growth requirments), (b) short life cycle, (c) self fertility, (d) smaller genome size which "makes it easier to find genes linked to specific traits, such as stem size and disease resistance". John Vogel, a lead author and molecular biologist with the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) says that Brachypodium is "easier to grow than many grasses, takes up less laboratory space, and offers easy transformation". This means that "scientists can insert foreign DNA into it, to study gene function and targeted approaches for crop improvement in the transformed plants".

Related information: http://www.brachypodium.org/