The complete genome of a moss has been sequenced, providing scientists an important evolutionary link between single-celled algae and flowering plants.
Just as the sequencing of animal genomes has helped scientists understand human genomic history, the sequencing of plant genomes will shed light on the evolution of the plant kingdom, according to Ralph S. Quatrano, Ph.D., the Spencer T. Olin Professor of Biology in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis and the corresponding author of the paper.
The accomplishment will "reveal insights into the conquest of land by plants," Quatrano says, including the identification of unique gene products and metabolic pathways as to how these diminutive plants protect themselves against stresses associated with living on land. The description of the genome is found in the Dec. 13, 2007, online issue of Science magazine.
The entire genome of the moss Physcomitrella patens was completed by scientists at the Joint Genome Institute (JGI) in Walnut Creek, Calif., a sequencing facility of the Department of Energy. The effort was coordinated by a consortium of international researchers from the United States, United Kingdom, Japan and Germany, and involved more than 100 scientists in the initial annotation of the genome.
