(Press-News.org) Athens, Ga. – The International Peanut Genome Initiative—a group of multinational crop geneticists who have been working in tandem for the last several years—has successfully sequenced the peanut's genome.
Scott Jackson, director of the University of Georgia Center for Applied Genetic Technologies in the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, serves as chair of the International Peanut Genome Initiative, or IPGI.
The new peanut genome sequence will be available to researchers and plant breeders across the globe to aid in the breeding of more productive and more resilient peanut varieties.
Peanut, known scientifically as Arachis hypogaea and also called groundnut, is important both commercially and nutritionally. While the oil- and protein-rich legume is seen as a cash crop in the developed world, it remains a valuable sustenance crop in developing nations.
"The peanut crop is important in the United States, but it's very important for developing nations as well," Jackson said. "In many areas, it is a primary calorie source for families and a cash crop for farmers."
Globally, farmers tend about 24 million hectares of peanuts each year and produce about 40 million metric tons.
"Improving peanut varieties to be more drought-, insect- and disease-resistant can help farmers in developed nations produce more peanuts with fewer pesticides and other chemicals and help farmers in developing nations feed their families and build more secure livelihoods," said plant geneticist Rajeev Varshney of the International Crops Research Institute for Semi-Arid Tropics in India, who serves on the IPGI.
The effort to sequence the peanut genome has been underway for several years. While peanuts were successfully bred for intensive cultivation for thousands of years, relatively little was known about the legume's genetic structure because of its complexity, according to Peggy Ozias-Akins, a plant geneticist on the UGA Tifton campus who also works with the IPGI and is director of the UGA Institute of Plant Breeding, Genetics and Genomics.
"Until now, we've bred peanuts relatively blindly, as compared to other crops," said IPGI plant geneticist David Bertioli of the Universidade de Brasília. "We've had less information to work with than we do with many crops, which have been more thoroughly researched and understood."
The peanut in fields today is the result of a natural cross between two wild species, Arachis duranensis and Arachis ipaensis, which occurred in north Argentina between 4,000 and 6,000 years ago. Because its ancestors were two different species, today's peanut is a polyploid, meaning the species can carry two separate genomes, designated A and B subgenomes.
To map the peanut's structure, researchers sequenced the genomes of the two ancestral parents because together they represent the cultivated peanut. The sequences provide researchers access to 96 percent of all peanut genes in their genomic context, providing the molecular map needed to more quickly breed drought- and disease-resistant, lower-input and higher-yielding varieties of peanuts.
The two ancestor wild species had been collected in nature, conserved in germplasm banks and then used by the IPGI to better understand the peanut genome. The genomes of the two ancestor species provide excellent models for the genome of the cultivated peanut. A. duranenis serves as a model for the A subgenome of the cultivated peanut while A. ipaensis represents the B subgenome.
Knowing the genome sequences of the two parent species will allow researchers to recognize the cultivated peanut's genomic structure by differentiating between the two subgenomes present in the plants. Being able to see the two separate structural elements also will aid future gene marker development—the determination of links between a gene's presence and a physical characteristic of the plant. Understanding the structure of the peanut's genome will lay the groundwork for new varieties with traits like added disease resistance and drought tolerance.
In addition, these genome sequences will serve as a guide for the assembly of the cultivated peanut genome that will help to decipher genomic changes that led to peanut domestication, which was marked by increases in seed number and size. The genome sequence assemblies and additional information are available at http://peanutbase.org/files/genomes/.
In the U.S. peanuts are a major row crop throughout the South and Southeast. While they are a major economic driver for the U.S. economy, the legume is also crucial to the diets and livelihoods of millions of small farmers in Asia and Africa, many of whom are women.
Apart from being a rich source of oil (44 percent to 55 percent), protein (20 percent to 50 percent) and carbohydrates (10 percent to 20 percent), peanut seeds are an important nutritional source of niacin, folate, calcium, phosphorus, magnesium, zinc, iron, riboflavin, thiamine and vitamin E.
"While the sequencing of the peanut can be seen as a great leap forward in plant genetics and genomics, it also has the potential to be a large step forward for stabilizing agriculture in developing countries," said Dave Hoisington, program director for the U.S. Agency for International Development Feed the Future Peanut and Mycotoxin Innovation Lab, which is hosted at UGA.
"With the release of the peanut genome sequence, researchers will now have much better tools available to accelerate the development of new peanut varieties with improved yields and better nutrition," he said.
INFORMATION:
The International Peanut Genome Initiative brings together scientists from the U.S., China, Brazil, India and Israel to delineate peanut genome sequences, characterize the genetic and phenotypic variation in cultivated and wild peanuts and develop genomic tools for peanut breeding. The initial sequencing was carried out by the BGI, Shenzhen, China, known previously as the Beijing Genomics Institute.
Assembly was done at the BGI, the USDA-ARS in Ames, Iowa, and at the University of California, Davis. The project was funded by the peanut industry through the Peanut Foundation and by MARS Inc. and four Chinese academies.
A complete list of the institutions involved with the project and the other funding sources is available at http://www.peanutbioscience.com.
First peanut genome sequenced
The International Peanut Genome Initiative releases first peanut genome sequences
2014-04-02
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
'3D' test could reduce reliance on animals for testing asthma and allergy medications
2014-04-02
To determine whether new medicines are safe and effective for humans, researchers must first test them in animals, which is costly and time-consuming, as well as ethically challenging. In a study published in ACS' journal Molecular Pharmaceutics, scientists report that they've developed a simple, "3D" laboratory method to test asthma and allergy medications that mimics what happens in the body, which could help reduce the need for animal testing.
Amir Ghaemmaghami and colleagues note that respiratory conditions, such as asthma and allergies, are becoming more common. ...
World's oldest weather report could revise Bronze Age chronology
2014-04-02
An inscription on a 3,500-year-old stone block from Egypt may be one of the world's oldest weather reports—and could provide new evidence about the chronology of events in the ancient Middle East.
A new translation of a 40-line inscription on the 6-foot-tall calcite block called the Tempest Stela describes rain, darkness and "the sky being in storm without cessation, louder than the cries of the masses."
Two scholars at the University of Chicago's Oriental Institute believe the unusual weather patterns described on the slab were the result of a massive volcano explosion ...
JCI Online ahead of print table of contents for April 1, 2014
2014-04-02
NOS1 expression predicts melanoma-dependent immune dysfunction
Individuals with cancer often exhibit dysfunctional immune signaling in response to interferon (IFN) stimulation. Furthermore, recent evidence indicates that pSTAT-1 levels, which are indicative of IFN responsiveness, in circulating immune cells are predictive of clinical outcome in melanoma patients. In this issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation, Qiuzhen Liu and colleagues at Southern Medical University, Guangzhou, China determined that melanoma cells have differing capacity to dampen IFN responses ...
Scientists eager to participate in public discourse on environment
2014-04-02
A survey of more than 500 researchers indicates that scientists have the desire to get more involved in public discussion and policy decisions regarding environmental issues, but have concerns about how their efforts might be perceived.
"Scientists debate whether they have a role in advocacy," says Gerald Singh, a PhD student in the Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability at UBC, who conducted the survey with his colleagues. "Some feel they need to remain objective and can't engage. Others feel they have a duty to get involved so that decisions are made ...
Eyes in the cereal aisle -- how Cap'n Crunch's gaze is influencing your purchasing
2014-04-02
Director of Cornell's Food and Brand Lab Brian Wansink and post-doctoral lab researcher Aner Tal, are releasing a new study today published in the Journal of Environment and Behavior that discovered consumers are 16 percent more likely to trust a brand of cereal when the characters on the boxes on the supermarket shelves look them straight in the eye. Not surprisingly, the study also found that the gaze of characters on children's cereal boxes is at a downward, 9.6-degree angle, while characters on adult cereal boxes look almost straight ahead.
Wansink says:
"If you ...
Positive, negative thinkers' brains revealed
2014-04-02
EAST LANSING, Mich. --- The ability to stay positive when times get tough -- and, conversely, of being negative -- may be hardwired in the brain, finds new research led by a Michigan State University psychologist.
The study, which appears in the Journal of Abnormal Psychology, is the first to provide biological evidence validating the idea that there are, in fact, positive and negative people in the world.
"It's the first time we've been able to find a brain marker that really distinguishes negative thinkers from positive thinkers," said Jason Moser, lead investigator ...
Cereal box psychology
2014-04-02
Silly rabbit, Trix are for kids! In a study of 65 cereals in 10 different grocery stores, Cornell researchers found that cereals marketed to kids are placed half as high on supermarket shelves as adult cereals—the average height for children's cereal boxes is 23 inches verses 48 inches for adult cereal. A second key finding from the same study is that the average angle of the gaze of cereal spokes-characters on cereal boxes marketed to kids is downward at a 9.6 degree angle whereas spokes-characters on adult cereal look almost straight ahead.
To examine the influence ...
An easier, safer, and more accurate treatment for pancreatic cancer
2014-04-02
(Lebanon, NH, 4/2/14) — Using CT scans with contrast enhancement, Dartmouth researchers measured treatment response to pancreatic cancer photodynamic therapy (PDT) according to a paper published in Physics in Medicine and Biology.
The research team at Dartmouth set out to reduce the imaging obstacles for PDT, a minimally invasive and nontoxic treatment for cancer. "This study implies that treatment response can be reliably predicted using contrast CT. This would represent a major breakthrough in PDT for pancreas cancer that allows for easier, faster treatment tailored ...
Galactic serial killer
2014-04-02
Several clues in the structure of NGC 1316 reveal that its past was turbulent. For instance, it has some unusual dust lanes [1] embedded within a much larger envelope of stars, and a population of unusually small globular star clusters. These suggest that it may have already swallowed a dust-rich spiral galaxy about three billion years ago.
Also seen around the galaxy are very faint tidal tails — wisps and shells of stars that have been torn from their original locations and flung into intergalactic space. These features are produced by complex gravitational effects on ...
Colorado grandparents may be able to seek visitation or custody
2014-04-02
Colorado grandparents may be able to seek visitation or custody
Article provided by Littman Family Law
Visit us at http://www.davidlittmanpc.com
The relationship between a child and his or her grandparents can be a huge factor in that child's happiness. Grandparents spoil us, teach us about our family's history, give us practical skills and shower us with love.
In spite of the importance of the grandparent/grandchild relationship, in some circumstances, a grandparent is cut off from his or her grandchild because of a dispute or disagreement with the child's parent ...
LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:
Long COVID brain fog linked to lung function
Concussions slow brain activity of high school football players
Study details how cancer cells fend off starvation and death from chemotherapy
Transformation of UN SDGs only way forward for sustainable development
New study reveals genetic drivers of early onset type 2 diabetes in South Asians
Delay and pay: Tipping point costs quadruple after waiting
Magnetic tornado is stirring up the haze at Jupiter's poles
Cancers grow uniformly throughout their mass
Researchers show complex relationship between Arctic warming and Arctic dust
Brain test shows that crabs process pain
Social fish with low status are so stressed out it impacts their brains
Predicting the weather: New meteorology estimation method aids building efficiency
Inside the ‘swat team’ – how insects react to virtual reality gaming
Oil spill still contaminating sensitive Mauritius mangroves three years on
Unmasking the voices of experience in healthcare studies
Pandemic raised food, housing insecurity in Oregon despite surge in spending
OU College of Medicine professor earns prestigious pancreatology award
Sub-Saharan Africa leads global HIV decline: Progress made but UNAIDS 2030 goals hang in balance, new IHME study finds
Popular diabetes and obesity drugs also protect kidneys, study shows
Stevens INI receives funding to expand research on the neural underpinnings of bipolar disorder
Protecting nature can safeguard cities from floods
NCSA receives honors in 2024 HPCwire Readers’ and Editors’ Choice Awards
Warning: Don’t miss Thanksgiving dinner, it’s more meaningful than you think
Expanding HPV vaccination to all adults aged 27-45 years unlikely to be cost-effective or efficient for HPV-related cancer prevention
Trauma care and mental health interventions training help family physicians prepare for times of war
Adapted nominal group technique effectively builds consensus on health care priorities for older adults
Single-visit first-trimester care with point-of-care ultrasound cuts emergency visits by 81% for non-miscarrying patients
Study reveals impact of trauma on health care professionals in Israel following 2023 terror attack
Primary care settings face barriers to screening for early detection of cognitive impairment
November/December Annals of Family Medicine Tip Sheet
[Press-News.org] First peanut genome sequencedThe International Peanut Genome Initiative releases first peanut genome sequences