Genome Sequencing Shows Past Genetic Events Made Soybeans Rich in Versatile Gene Families

Newswise
Released: 1/14/2010 12:00 PM EST
Source: University of North Carolina at Charlotte

Newswise — Among the many plants that humans have found useful enough to domesticate, soybean (Glycine max) is a wonder. Like other legumes, it has the important ability to make some of its own essential nutrients by hosting nitrogen-fixing bacteria. Soybean is also a virtual chemical factory, so rich in proteins that it is a major source of protein for animal feed, and so rich in oils that it is used to produce much of the world’s cooking oil; it is also a major source for biodiesel.

If it seems as if nature could hardly have made agriculture a more useful plant, at last we may now be able to understand why. The first complete sequencing of the soybean genome has now made available the fine details of the soybean’s unusually productive genetic code and is revealing an unusual evolutionary history that led to its chemical versatility.

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