How do organisms adapt to complex and changing environments? Plants in the genus Mimulus inhabit highly variable habitats and are famous for their extraordinary ecological diversity. Mimulus is now a powerful system for ecological genomic studies, thanks to its experimental tractability, rapidly growing research community, and the JGI-generated reference genome for M. guttatus. To develop a pan-genus genomic platform for investigations into gene content and function, we propose that JGI will produce reference and re-sequenced genomes of environmentally important species throughout the genus.
Proposer: John Willis, Duke University
Proposal: Genomic Resources for Mimulus, a Powerful Plant System for Analyses of Environmental Adaptations