First Draft Of Corn Genome Completed.doc

First Draft Of Corn Genome Completed ScienceDaily (Feb. 27, 2008) — Iowa State University researchers helped write the first draft of the corn genome sequence that will be announced Feb. 28, at the 50th Annual Maize Genetics Conference in Washington, D.C. Patrick Schnable, a Baker Professor of Agronomy and director of the Center for Plant Genomics and the Center for Carbon Capturing Crops, and Srinivas Aluru, a Stanley Chair in Interdisciplinary Engineering and a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, led the work at Iowa State and provided the project with expertise in corn genomics and supercomputing. Schnable and Aluru led Iowa States work to refine assemblies of the genomic sequences generated by researchers at Washington University. In addition, they identified almost 100 genes which have nearly identical copies in the genome. Schnable said these nearly identical paralogs may have played important roles during the evolution and domestication of corn and may have contributed to the ability of breeders to mold this important crop species to meet human needs. The Schnable and Aluru teams also discovered several hundred new corn genes that are not present in other plants. Some of these genes may be responsible for unique attributes of corn. The corn genome is an especially difficult jigsaw puzzle to put together, Schnable said. There are some 2.5 billion base pairs that make up the double helix of corn DNA. The corn genome also has long lines of repetitive code. And corn has 50,000 to 60,000 genes to identify and characterize. Thats about twice the number of genes in humans. Plus, 50 percent or more of the corn genome is made up of transposons or jumping genes. Those are pieces of DNA that can move around the genome and change the function of genes. Solving all those assembly challenges took a lot of computing power and some new software technology. Aluru and his research team developed software called PaCE and LTR_par that runs on parallel computers --