US EditionScientists Decode 300-Million-Year-Old DNA Code Hidden in Plant Genomes
Researchers identified 2.3 million conserved regulatory DNA sequences from 284 plant species, revealing a 300-million-year-old blueprint that guides plant evolution and crop improvement.
- In a new study published in Science, Prof. Idan Efroni, Prof. Zachary Lippman, and Prof. Madelaine E. Bartlett reported that a core portion of the plant regulatory code has been conserved for 300 million years of evolution.
- Genome reshuffling obscured regulatory sequences, so plant scientists used Conservatory, a computational genome-assembly and comparison tool, to recover hidden elements across 284 plant genomes.
- Analysis revealed conserved ordering even as spacing and associations shift, and experimental mutation of conserved non-coding sequences near the HOMEOBOX gene family caused severe developmental abnormalities, showing these elements remain essential today.
- The discovery could reshape agricultural approaches by providing crop breeders and agricultural researchers with a Conservatory atlas as a resource for plant breeding, enabling precision breeding, synthetic biology, and more resilient crops.
- Across 314 plant genomes from 284 species, the atlas shows approximately 2.3 million conserved regulatory sequences, including more than 3,000 predating flowering plants and some over 400 million years old.
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7 Articles
300 million years of hidden genetic instructions shaping plant evolution revealed
A deep genetic mystery has baffled plant scientists for decades. Although leaves, stems, and flowers develop in strikingly similar ways across many plant species, scientists have struggled to identify the shared DNA instructions that guide their formation. A new study now uncovers this hidden regulatory code and shows that its core has been conserved for 300 million years of plant evolution. Remarkably, these ancient DNA sequences were hidden in…
300 Million Years of Hidden Genetic Code Uncovered Driving Plant Evolution
For decades, plant scientists have grappled with one of the most perplexing genetic enigmas: despite the remarkable uniformity in the development of leaves, stems, and flowers across diverse plant species, the underlying DNA instructions orchestrating these processes have remained elusive. This puzzle has persisted due
Secrets of evolution found in ancient plant DNA | Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
You’ve heard of deep space, but what about deep time? Today’s geneticists and evolutionary biologists can extend their investigations further back in time than ever imagined. Still, many mysteries remain. One has vexed biologists for decades. In both plants and animals, gene sequences and functions are often conserved across species over hundreds of millions of...
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