Take that , sunflowers . The convoluted genetic codification that has thwarted scientist for so long has finally been cracked . scientist print their findings in the journalNature .
helianthus ( Helianthus annuus L. ) make compelling research issue for a number of reasonableness . Their richly hue faces are both appealing and iconic , figuring in some of the world ’s most famous art . helianthus seed and helianthus oil are braggart - deal crops in some part of the world , in part because the hardy plant life can tough it out through drouth and other uttermost conditions . And the flower heads splendidly do this :
Previous endeavor to analyze the full helianthus genome have all been unsuccessful , thanks to the many long , perplexing , and similar - looking chunks of DNA in the industrial plant ’s blueprint . We merely did n’t have the applied science to make sentience of it .
Now we do , after an enormous team of researchers from Canada , France , the United States , and Israel put their brains together . They developed a platform to unspool and identify 3.6 gigabases — that ’s 3.6 x 1,000,000,000 base pairs — of sunflower DNA .
The results trace the evolution of not only the sunflower but of the entire asterid clade , amassive familyof more than 75,000 plants including tomatoes , sweet potatoes , petunias , coffee , sesame , wampum , plenty , honeysuckle , olive , and teakwood tree .
Around 29 million years ago , the sunflower split off and began copying its genome into the tricky patchwork it is today .
“ This is one of the most ambitious genomes published to appointment , ” senior author Loren Rieseberg of the University of British Columbia said in a argument [ PDF ] . “ Not only have we sequence sunflower ’s genome but we have also built forcible and genetic maps of its structure , which increases the genome ’s value for research and breeding . ”
