Plant & Animal Genomes XVII Conference

January 10-14, 2009
Town & Country Convention Center
San Diego, CA

Genome Analysis Of The Brachypodium Genome: A Genomic Blueprint For Cereal Genomes

Georg Haberer¹ , Heidrun Gundlach¹ , Manuel Spannagl¹ , Yu Wang¹ , Therese Mitros² , Jerome Salse⁴ , Dan Rokhsar² , Mike Bevan³ , Klaus FX Mayer¹

¹  MIPS/IBIS Institute of Bioinformatics and System Biology, Helmholtz Center Munich, D-85764 Neuherberg, Germany Joint Genome Institute, Walnut Creek, CA, USA

²  Joint Genome Institute, Walnut Creek, CA, USA

³  John Innes Centre, Norwich, UK

⁴  INRA-University Clermont II Joint Research Unit for Genetics, Diversity and Ecophysiology of Cereals, Clermont-Ferrand-Theix Research Centre, France

Brachypodium distachyon has many qualities that make it a model for functional genomics studies in temperate grasses and cereals. The completed Brachypodium genome is an important model and genomics template for ongoing efforts in genome sequencing of wheat (16 Gb) or barley (5 Gb). As the Brachypodium gene content and gee structures represent a fundamental toolbox for grass and cereal genomes highest quality structural gene calls are imperative. Therefore painstaking analysis using a trained multi-step and integrative structural annotation pipeline has been implemented and applied. The analysis reveals that approximately 26000 genes are encoded on the genome. An intergenome comparison of Brachypodium encoded genes to various complete genomes has been undertaken and genome similarities and peculiarities concerning expanded and contracted gene families as well as Brachypodium specific gene families will be reported. Availability of Brachypodium along with other monocot reference systems, namely sorghum and rice, enables to undertake analysis of conserved noncoding components, namely miRNAs, noncoding ORFs and cis regulatory elements using comparative genomics approaches. We will report on the analytical strategies used and results obtained emphasizing the power and potential of comparative genomic approaches in cereal genomics.