Sequencing Technology Helps Reveal What Plant Genomes Really Encode

A team of scientists from the University of Dundee and the James Hutton Institute (JHI) are the first researchers in the world to apply a new technique to sequence the genes of the plant Arabidopsis. Funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, they are the first to try to understand how plant genes are organized by directly sequencing RNA instead of DNA.

The research involved collaboration between a team of biologists led by Dr. Gordon Simpson of the University and JHI, computational scientists led by Professor Geoff Barton at Dundee, and a technology group from Helicos Biosciences in the United States. Dr. Simpson explained that "Until now, people have sequenced RNA by first converting it back into DNA. They chop it up, add on special molecules and then because there is not enough, they copy the bits again and again, before finally sequencing. The trouble is that all these steps introduce bias and error. What's special about what we have done is we have avoided all these steps and sequenced the RNA directly."

The new technique developed by the team allows scientists to see where genes end. This is important because it helps find individual genes within genomes and also reveals something about the behavior of cells. Aside from enabling scientists to understand what genomes actually encode and how active genes are, direct RNA sequencing is especially useful for situations where only a few cells are available.

The news release from the University of Dundee is available at http://www.dundee.ac.uk/pressreleases/2012/july12/plantgenomes.htm.