Criteria for the choice of plant species for genome sequencing, to advance plant biology and agriculture

Abstract

Information from genome sequences is essential to understand the organization of genomes, chromosomes, genes, regulatory and repetitive elements present in plant genomes and also to understand the evolutionary significance of variations observed in genome compositions. Understandably, the plant genome sequencing effort has been growing in recent years, since the plant genome organization is not fully understood. The genome sequences of Arabidopsis thaliana and rice have been completed and a draft sequence of the poplar genome (http://genome.jgi- psf.org/Poptr1/Poptr1.home.html) has also been completed.