SoylentNews

Phoenix666 [soylentnews.org] writes:

John Muir declared the sugar pine to be “king of the conifers” more than a century ago. Now scientists have sequenced its genome [futurity.org].

At 10 times the size of the human genome, the sugar pine genome is the largest ever sequenced for any organism. The findings are expected to provide valuable information that may help preserve the iconic but endangered tree.

“Having the genome sequence allows us to discover the underlying genetic determinants of disease resistance, which will greatly facilitate reforestation efforts,” says David Neale, a forest tree geneticist at the University of California, Davis. “We can now give forest managers modern, rapid genetic tools to identify resistant trees.”

The genome has been publicly released and is available through open access at the Pine Reference Sequences website [pinegenome.org].

Strange that the tree's genome should be so much larger than the human's.

Original Submission