In Washington, researchers at the USDA and the Joint Genome Institute today announced that they have completed sequencing the genome of Brachypodium distachyon, similar to switchgrass – as a model organism that is similar to but easier to grow and study than important agricultural crops, used by plant scientists the way other researchers use lab mice to study human disease.Brachypodium takes up less laboratory space, and offers easy transformation, which means scientists can insert foreign DNA into it to study gene function and targeted approaches for crop improvement in the transformed plants, said John Vogel, a lead author and molecular biologist with the Agricultural Research Service (ARS), USDA’s chief intramural scientific research agency.
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