Scientists from the United States, United Kingdom and Germany recently completed the first analysis of the bread wheat genome, one of the "big three" global crops upon which mankind depends for nutrition.

"The gene sequences generated provide new and very powerful resources not only for basic research but also for breeding future generations of wheat more quickly and more attuned to local environmental conditions," said John C. Wingfield, assistant director of the National Science Foundation's Directorate for Biological Sciences.

"Wheat is a seminally important crop along with rice and corn. This international effort that includes NSF-supported scientists leveraged funding and resources from across the globe to support the broader wheat research community," said Wingfield.

NSF's Division of Integrative Organismal Systems through its Plant Genome Research Program funded research in the United States conducted at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York and at University of California, Davis. Details of the genomic analysis are in this week's Nature magazine.

Previously, the size and complexity of the wheat genome had been significant barriers to performing a complete analysis. But, the researchers were able to make rapid progress by developing a new strategy that compared wheat sequences to known grass genes--from rice and barley, for example.

Then they compared these known grass genes to direct ancestors of wheat, whose genomes are much simpler than modern wheat cereal grasses. This revealed a highly dynamic genome.

"The raw data of the wheat genome is like having tens of billions of scrabble letters," said Neil Hall, a lead researcher at the University of Liverpool's Centre for Genome Research in the United Kingdom. "You know which letters are present and their quantities, but they need to be assembled on the board in the right sequence before you can spell out their order into genes."

The gene comparison also revealed a wheat genome that has undergone genetic loss as a consequence of domestication.

Archeological and genetic evidence points to the South Caspian Basin near Iran and Azerbaijan as the origin of bread wheat cultivation about 8,000 years ago. Its cultivation is directly associated with the rapid spread of settled societies.

Today, wheat is one of the most widely cultivated crops due to its adaptability, high yields and nutritional and processing qualities. But new diseases and sub-optimal growing conditions have steadily reduced yields, increased prices and reduced reserves.

The rest is here:
Bread Wheat's Genetic Code Breakthrough

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