The International Wheat Genome Sequencing Consortium
(IWGSC), a global team led by Canadians, is ahead of the five-year schedule to
discover the complete genome for bread-quality wheats.
It now seems that it will reach its goal within two years
following success in assembling the complete genome for Chinese spring bread
wheat.
“The assembly “represents a major breakthrough for the IWGSC
integrated strategy towards delivering a high-quality reference sequence for
each of the 21 bread wheat chromosomes,” project leader Nils Stein, of German
plant research centre IPK Gatersleben, said in a release.
Where the IWGSC’s strategy is to study wheat one chromosome
at a time, the assembly announced Wednesday was charted using a combination of
software, computer programming and bioinformatics tools to look at virtually
the entire genome.
The new data can now be integrated with physical-map-based
sequence data to produce a “high-quality, ordered sequence” for each wheat
chromosome, precisely locating genes and other markers along the chromosomes
and providing “invaluable” tools for wheat breeders, the consortium said.
The consortium now expects to have a complete picture of the
wheat genome, 17 billion base pairs in all, with a clear idea of how the genes
are ordered, within two years.
Given that the wheat genome is five times the size of the
human genome, earlier estimates had suggested such work would take four or five
more years, the University of Saskatchewan said in a separate release.
