Plant & Animal Genomes XVII Conference

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

Toward Unraveling The Morphological Plasticity And Genome Redundancy Of Brassica oleracea

J. Chris Pires¹ , Andrew H. Paterson² , Christopher D. Town³

¹  University of Missouri, Columbia MO, USA.

²  University of Georgia, Athens GA, USA.

³  J Craig Venter Institute, Rockville MD, USA.

Extraordinary morphological diversity, together with its close relationship to Arabidopsis, makes Brassica oleracea (cabbage, brussels sprouts, broccoli, cauliflower, kohlrabi, kale) an especially attractive system in which to elucidate fundamental biological processes. It has been suggested that rapid morphological evolution of B. oleracea is associated with genome doubling events. Following polyploidization, both rapid genome restructuring and long-term diploidization processes are known to occur in Brassica, and these phenomena are expected to provide substantial variation upon which selection may act. To give an immediate contextual framework to interpret the structure, function, and evolution of the B. oleracea genome, we are making comparisons to Arabidopsis, Brassica rapa, and to closely-related Sisymbrium irio. We will report on our progress toward an integrated genetic-physical map of B. oleraceae (BAC-end sequences, overgo probes and fingerprinting) and sequencing across triplicated regions of the Brassica genome.