John Innes Centre, Colney Lane, Norwich NR4 7UJ, UK.
Curr Opin Biotechnol. 2010 Apr;21(2):211-7. doi: 10.1016/j.copbio.2010.03.006. Epub 2010 Mar 31.
Grass crops are the most important sources of human nutrition, and their improvement is centrally important for meeting the challenges of sustainable agriculture, for feeding the world's population and for developing renewable supplies of fuel and industrial products. We describe the complete sequence of the compact genome of Brachypodium distachyon (Brachypodium) the first pooid grass to be sequenced. We demonstrate the many favorable characteristics of Brachypodium as an experimental system and show how it can be used to navigate the large and complex genomes of closely related grasses. The functional genomics and other experimental resources that are being developed will provide a key resource for improving food and forage crops, in particular wheat, barley and forage grasses, and for establishing new grass crops for sustainable energy production.
牧草是人类营养的最重要来源，改良牧草对于应对可持续农业的挑战、养活世界人口以及开发可再生燃料和工业产品至关重要。我们描述了第一个被测序的禾本科短柄草（Brachypodium distachyon）紧密型基因组的完整序列。我们展示了 Brachypodium 作为实验系统的许多优良特性，并说明了如何利用它来研究与其密切相关的禾本科植物的大型复杂基因组。正在开发的功能基因组学和其他实验资源将为改良粮食和饲料作物，特别是小麦、大麦和饲料草，以及为可持续能源生产建立新的牧草作物提供关键资源。
