‘Gold Standard’ Cotton Genome Sequenced

An international consortium with representatives from most of the world’s major cotton-producing countries, led by Regents Professor Andrew Paterson of the University of Georgia and includingCandace Haigler, a North Carolina State University professor ofcrop science和plant biology, has described the first ‘gold-standard’ genome sequence for cotton. Published today inNature，这是在分析棉基因，染色体及其进化方面的20多年努力的高潮。

棉花基因组序列在农场和生物技术实验室中都是非常宝贵的。在农场上，鉴定关键棉花基因及其重要性将加速理解，并为增加棉花生产，质量和可持续性提供至关重要的信息。In the lab, the comparison of an elite cotton cultivar to its wild ancestors provides new insights into how a ‘polyploid’ becomes ‘more than the sum of its progenitors.’ All flowering plants have experienced polyploidy, a process by which the entire hereditary blueprint of an organism is doubled. This is the first time that a polyploid plant could be compared to its progenitors over the entire genome, illuminating evolutionary processes salient to all plants and providing a strategy to better understand the genome of many other crops such as canola, wheat and peanut.

棉花序列是最好的lowering plant sequences yet produced. Ironically, the sequence revealed it to also be among the most complex of flowering plant genomes, experiencing at least 30-fold multiplication of its genetic complement since its origin from an ancestral flowering plant. Critical to understanding this complexity was information accumulated over more than 20 years of research funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Cotton Incorporated, the Consortium for Plant Biotechnology Research, Bayer Crop Science, and other public and private agencies.

The ‘gold-standard’ sequence was produced forGossypium raimondii., chosen by the worldwide cotton community to be the first of 50 cotton species to be sequenced as the best model for the New World progenitor of commercially important Upland and Pima cottons. Partnership with the Mississippi State University’s Institute for Genomics, Biocomputing & Biotechnology and the USDA-ARS, augmented the scope and impact of the research by allowing production of ‘draft’ sequences of a model for the other (Old World) progenitor,G. herbaceum以及商业上重要的高地棉花（G. hirsutum) cultivar ‘Acala Maxxa’, and a wild relative,G. longicalyx.

“The complete genome sequence of ancestralG. raimondii海吉勒说，商业棉花和其他相关物种的“草案”序列将赋予我们正在进行的“功能基因组学”的持续研究，或者寻求控制棉纤维质量的特定基因。“

Haigler and another co-author, Alison Roberts from the University of Rhode Island, classified theG. raimondiigenes encoding cellulose synthases and related enzymes required for plant cell wall synthesis. Cotton fiber strength comes from its thick secondary cell wall composed of nearly pure cellulose, which is also the world’s most abundant renewable polymer because of the essential role of cellulose fibrils in plant structure.

Uncovering the genetic control of cellulose synthesis could lead to the improvement of cotton fibers, as well as other plant fibers such as those in wood and biomass crops targeted towards biofuels production, Haigler adds.

“In addition, the unique structure of the cotton fiber makes it useful in bioremediation, and accelerated cotton crop improvement also promises to improve water efficiency and reduce pesticide use,” said Jeremy Schmutz, head of the Department of Energy’s Joint Genome Institute Plant Program and a faculty investigator at the HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology, who led the effort to sequence and assemble the genome for the JGI.

棉花生产巨大贡献了许多经济体。在美国种植的棉纤维的价值通常为每年约60亿美元。棉籽油和膳食副产品增加了近10亿美元的价值。超过430,000个国内工作与棉花生产和加工有关，总体上美国美国国内生产总值约为1200亿美元，估计全球500亿美元。

Don Jones, director of agricultural research at Cotton Incorporated, said thisG. raimondiigold standard sequence will be the foundation for further sequencing of commercially important upland cotton,G. hirsutum.

“这种序列努力表明，种植者提供的棉花加入资金的明智投资产生了尖端的研究，使更大的棉花群落受益。这个序列是一个基石，它将有助于推进我们的知识，因此我们更彻底地了解了导致产量，改善纤维质量和更好的压力耐受性的生物学，所有改进都会受益于越来越遥远的未来的种植者。“

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