International Project To Map 1,000 Plant Species’ DNA

Matt Hopkins Posted by Matt Hopkins|2 December 2008

Dr. Gane Ka-Shu Wong, an Alberta, Canada-based research chair in Biosystems for Alberta’s Informatics Circle of Research Excellence (iCORE), will lead the Alberta 1,000 Plants Initiative, an international project focused on finding new genomic information. The Initiative is supported by the Alberta government, the Alberta Agricultural Research Institute (AARI), Genome Alberta, the University of Alberta, and international partners including the Beijing Genomics Institute (China) and Musea Ventures (USA). The US $2-million 1,000 Plants Initiative is an early spin-off of Dr. Wong’s four-year, $4-million research program.

“[O]nly about 100 plant species DNA sequences have been analyzed in the proposed manner, so this project has real potential for new discoveries that can make nature work for us,” says Dr. Wong. The results of the Initiative could be used for breeding improved crops, from which high-value bio-products and medicinal compounds can be commercialized. After the first phase of the Alberta 1,000 Plants Initiative, the most promising plant species will be selected for further commercialization development, says AgLine News.

All of the sequence data produced by the Initiative will be made publicly available through the GenBank database at www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Genbank/.