About This Project
Pomegranate is a valuable crop that is grown commercially in many parts of the world. Pomegranate is native to a region from Iran to northern India. This fruit is considered to be highly valuable due to its health-beneficial effects, appealing taste and pleasing esthetics. We propose to sequence the pomegranate genome. This powerful research tool will help identify genes which could help to obtain genetic information necessary to improve quality and yield and breeding traits such as soft-seed.
Ask the Scientists
Join The DiscussionWhat is the context of this research?
Recent advances in DNA sequencing technology have made it possible to cheaply and efficiently generate genome sequence data. Pomegranate genome sequencing will provide fundamental knowledge for understanding the evolution of too many chemical and phenotypic traits. Other hand having a comprehensive genome to use as a reference allows us to more quickly and easily sequence the genome's of additional individuals.
What is the significance of this project?
Interesting pomegranate cultivars were reported from several locations all over the world. Success in breeding for economically important traits depends upon the information available on inheritance like dominance and recessive relationships, number of genes governing the trait, and gene interaction. Soft-seed or absence of seeds is a desirable economic trait that improves the consumptive qualities of pomegranate fruit. Fruits with the similar weight and uniform shape are desirable in terms of marketing value. The fact that pomegranate fruit has different industrial usage, such as fruit juice, vinegar, citric acid and medicine, lead to its gaining popularity in the world markets. Sequencing the genome will identify genes involved in these traits.
What are the goals of the project?
The purpose of this project is to sequence the pomegranate nuclear DNA and provide an annotated de novo genome assembly. Next generation sequencing technologies that have been developed recently, make large-scale sequencing of genomic DNA very efficient and relatively cheap.
Budget
This project represents the first stage in an effort to completely sequence the pomegranate genome. Without the funding from this Experiment project sequencing the genomes of pomegranate will not be possible and without genetic information breeding programs are reduced.
Meet the Team
Aboozar Soorni
I am working in the area of plant genomic analysis. I am especially so interested to work on field of NGS technology (genome sequencing, RNASeq, Genotyping-By-Sequencing (GBS)…) and bioinformatic analysis (de-novo genome and transcriptome assemblies, genome annotation, expression analysis, phylogenomics analysis…).
Aureliano Bombarely
I am a genobotanist seduced by the colorful diversity of plant phenotypes. My research is focused on the study of plant domestication and evolution using genomic approaches such as whole genome sequencing, reduced representation genotyping, RNA-seq and ChIP-Seq. I have been involved in several plant genome sequencing projects such as tomato, watermelon and Nicotiana benthamiana. Currently I am using floral crops from the 18th century such as begonias, florist’s gloxinias and petunias as models to study the link between genomic and phenotypic changes during the plant domestication process. I graduated from the University of Malaga, Spain, in 2001. I obtained my PhD degree from the same university in 2007 studying the ripening process in strawberries. Then I moved to Ithaca, NY, for a first postdoc in the Sol Genomic Network database at the Boyce Thompson Institute (from 2008 to 2012; Bioinformatics in Solanaceae), and a second one in the Department of Plant Biology at Cornell University (from 2012 to 2014; Systematics in Polyploids). I am currently a Translational Genomics Assistant Professor in the Department of Horticulture at Virginia Tech.
Lab Notes
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