In New York, researchers from Dovetail Genomics, BGI, and University of California, Davis have assembled a lettuce genome using an in vitro scaffolding improvement technique, and thus have found a way to target genome editing to improve plants which isn’t as easily done with plants as with animals. While corn, wheat and soybeans have had some genome editing attention, lettuce has not, even though it’s an important agricultural commodity.
Richard Michelmore, the paper’s lead author and UCD Professor, told GenomeWeb, “This has recently provided an even better assembly than that described in the paper. There are now real chromosome-scale assemblies coming out” for plant genomes in the next six to 12 months.” As for the lettuce family, “They are the most successful family of flowering plants in terms of number of species and habitats inhabited. These new genome assembly approaches allow the rapid and inexpensive development of highly informative genome resources for species within this and other plant families that were previously inaccessible.”