Sunday, July 10, 2011

Spud Gene!

Scientists at the Potato Genome Sequencing Consortium (best name ever right?) have finally succeeded in mapping the full genome sequence of the humble spud.
Fun fact potatoes are the 3rd most grown crop and over 309 million tonnes of potato was sold last year? AMAZING!
But back to the Potato Genome Sequencing Consortium!!
They have mapped all 12 haploid chromosomes (the dna bits)and its 840 million base pairs!
The two potato strains they sequenced where
"RH89-039-16 (RH), a diploid, heterozygous potato variety
DM1-3 516R44 (DM), a doubled monoploid."
Now for those of us that dont understand big words like that basically they are two different strains of potato and therefore have different genetic code.

The benefit of having completely mapped a genome is that now we can use it to find similarities too other plants, genetically modify the potatoes to be hardier and grow better, all sorts of wild wonderful things!

Soon is the day where we shall consume an entire meal in pill form and peel a banana to get a carrot.

2 comments:

  1. I want to peel a banana and get a waffle. Can they do that yet?

    ReplyDelete
  2. One day hopefully you wont even need to peel the banana you will think "waffle" and then have one.

    ReplyDelete

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