Abstract

Cereals are the major sources of calories worldwide. Their production should be high to achieve food security, despite the projected increase in global population. Genomics research may enhance cereal productivity. Genomics immensely benefits from robust next-generation sequencing (NGS) techniques, which produce vast amounts of sequence data in a time and cost-efficient way. Research has demonstrated that gene sequences among closely related species that share common ancestry have remained well conserved over millions of years of evolution. Comparative genomics allows for comparison of genome sequences across different species, with the implication that genomes with large sizes can be investigated using closely related species with smaller genomes. This offers prospects of studying genes in a single species and, in turn, gaining information on their functions in other related species. Comparative genomics is expected to provide invaluable information on the control of gene function in complex cereal genomes, and also in designing molecular markers across related species. This chapter discusses advances in sequencing technologies, their application in cereal genomics and their potential contribution to the understanding of the relationships between the different cereal genomes and their phenotypes.

Keywords

Bioinformatics; Cereals; Comparative genomics; Next-generation sequencing; Synteny

Published in

Title: Plant Genomics
ISBN: 978-953-51-2456-6
Publisher: InTech

SLU Authors

• Ortiz Rios, Rodomiro Octavio

  • Department of Plant Breeding, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

UKÄ Subject classification

Plant Biotechnology
Genetics and Breeding


Publication identifier

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5772/61763

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/76927