Plant & Animal Genomes XV Conference

January 13-17, 2007
Town & Country Convention Center
San Diego, CA

Using The Model Grass Brachypodium distachyon To Develop Plant Bioenergy Feedstocks

John P. Vogel¹ , Yong Q. Gu¹ , Ming-Cheng Luo² , Gerard R. Lazo¹ , Naxin Huo¹ , Olin D. Anderson¹ , Daniel M. Hayden¹ , Theresa A. Hill¹ , Christian, M. Tobias¹ , Debbie Laudencia-Chingcuanco¹

¹  USDA-ARS Western Regional Research Center, 800 Buchanan St., Albany, CA 94710, USA

²  Department of Plant Sciences, University of California, Davis, CA 95616, USA

Herbaceous energy crops, especially grasses, are poised to become a major source of energy in the United States. Better knowledge of basic grass biology (e.g. identification of the genes that control cell wall composition, plant architecture, cell size, cell division, reproduction, nutrient uptake, carbon flux, etc.) could be used to design rational strategies for crop improvement. The use of an appropriate model system is an efficient way to gain this knowledge. Unfortunately, due to its distant relationship to monocots, Arabidopsis is not suitable to study biological features unique to the grasses (e.g. cell wall composition). Rice is not an ideal model either because it is a specialized semi-aquatic tropical grass and its large size and long generation time make experiments which involve growing large numbers of plants under controlled conditions very expensive. Brachypodium distachyon is a small temperate grass with all the attributes needed to be a modern model organism including simple growth requirements, fast generation time, small stature, small genome size and self-fertility. An overview of the genomic tools we have developed (high efficiency Agrobacterium-mediated transformation, EST sequences, BAC end sequences, physical mapping, and insertional mutagenesis) will be presented.