德國萊布尼茨植物遺傳學(xué)與農(nóng)作物研究所的Stein博士帶領(lǐng)一個國際科研團體，經(jīng)過兩年努力,，終于首次觀察到谷類作物大麥的全基因組?？茖W(xué)家們借助他們建立的新方法,，已能確定大麥全部基因2/3的排序，這些成果成為完整破譯大麥與相近的小麥基因組的基礎(chǔ),。
根據(jù)來自世界糧農(nóng)組織的信息,，小麥與大麥在全球種植最多的谷物排名中分別占據(jù)第一和第五位，它們對于經(jīng)濟與科研具有重要意義,?？茖W(xué)家們只有在掌握了植物的遺傳密碼后，才能理解為其復(fù)雜性狀負(fù)責(zé)的分子機制,。而了解遺傳密碼也是改善作物重要性能的基礎(chǔ),，比如耐旱與抵抗力,。
然而谷物基因組極其龐大且構(gòu)造復(fù)雜，這使得完整解碼困難很大,。Stein博士稱,，大麥基因組約為人類基因組的兩倍半，是水稻基因組的12倍,，全部解碼需要1億美元經(jīng)費,。成功測試的新方法現(xiàn)已用來研究更為龐大的小麥基因組。
由于很多農(nóng)作物具有相似性,，研究人員可以將大麥的遺傳信息與特征表現(xiàn)之間的關(guān)系轉(zhuǎn)用于研究比如黑麥等其他近似的谷類,。（生物谷Bioon.com）
生物谷推薦原文出處;
The Plant Cell doi: 10.1105/tpc.111.086629
Frequent Gene Movement and Pseudogene Evolution Is Common to the Large and Complex Genomes of Wheat, Barley, and Their Relatives
Thomas Wicker, Klaus F.X. Mayer, Heidrun Gundlach, Mihaela Martis, Burkhard Steuernagel, Uwe Scholz, Hana imkovád, Marie Kubaláková, Frédéric Choulet, Stefan Taudien, Matthias Platzer, Catherine Feuillet, Tzion Fahima, Hikmet Budak, Jaroslav Dole?el, Beat Keller and Nils Stein
All six arms of the group 1 chromosomes of hexaploid wheat (Triticum aestivum) were sequenced with Roche/454 to 1.3- to 2.2-fold coverage and compared with similar data sets from the homoeologous chromosome 1H of barley (Hordeum vulgare). Six to ten thousand gene sequences were sampled per chromosome. These were classified into genes that have their closest homologs in the Triticeae group 1 syntenic region in Brachypodium, rice (Oryza sativa), and/or sorghum (Sorghum bicolor) and genes that have their homologs elsewhere in these model grass genomes. Although the number of syntenic genes was similar between the homologous groups, the amount of nonsyntenic genes was found to be extremely diverse between wheat and barley and even between wheat subgenomes. Besides a small core group of genes that are nonsyntenic in other grasses but conserved among Triticeae, we found thousands of genic sequences that are specific to chromosomes of one single species or subgenome. By examining in detail 50 genes from chromosome 1H for which BAC sequences were available, we found that many represent pseudogenes that resulted from transposable element activity and double-strand break repair. Thus, Triticeae seem to accumulate nonsyntenic genes frequently. Since many of them are likely to be pseudogenes, total gene numbers in Triticeae are prone to pronounced overestimates.
