Abstract
Three subfamilies of grasses, the Ehrhartoideae, Panicoideae and Pooideae, provide the bulk of human nutrition and are poised to become major sources of renewable energy. Here we describe the genome sequence of the wild grass Brachypodium distachyon (Brachypodium), which is, to our knowledge, the first member of the Pooideae subfamily to be sequenced. Comparison of the Brachypodium, rice and sorghum genomes shows a precise history of genome evolution across a broad diversity of the grasses, and establishes a template for analysis of the large genomes of economically important pooid grasses such as wheat. The high-quality genome sequence, coupled with ease of cultivation and transformation, small size and rapid life cycle, will help Brachypodium reach its potential as an important model system for developing new energy and food crops.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 763-768 |
Number of pages | 6 |
Journal | Nature |
Volume | 463 |
Issue number | 7282 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Feb 11 2010 |
Funding
Acknowledgements We acknowledge the contributions of the late M. Gale, who identified the importance of conserved gene order in grass genomes. This work was mainly supported by the US Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute Community Sequencing Program project with J.P.V., D.F.G., T.C.M. and M.W.B., a BBSRC grant to M.W.B., an EU Contract Agronomics grant to M.W.B. and K.F.X.M., and GABI Barlex grant to K.F.X.M. Illumina transcriptome sequencing was supported by a DOE Plant Feedstock Genomics for Bioenergy grant and an Oregon State Agricultural Research Foundation grant to T.C.M.; small RNA research was supported by the DOE Plant Feedstock Genomics for Bioenergy grants to P.J.G. and T.C.M.; annotation was supported by a DOE Plant Feedstocks for Genomics Bioenergy grant to J.P.V. A full list of support and acknowledgements is in the Supplementary Information.