Researchers Sequence Genome of the Woodland Strawberry

ATLANTAA consortium of 75 researchers from 38 institutions sequenced the genome of the woodland strawberry (Fragaria vesca), paving the way for breeding more flavorful, hardier varieties of strawberry and other similar crops.

"We've created the strawberry parts list," said Kevin Folta, an associate professor with the University of Florida's Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences. "For every organism on the planet, if you're going to try to do any advanced science or use molecular-assisted breeding, a parts list is really helpful. In the old days, we had to go out and figure out what the parts were. Now we know the components that make up the strawberry plant."

Genetically, the woodland strawberry is similar but less complex than the cultivated strawberry. The 14-chromosome woodland strawberry has one of the smallest genomes of economically significant plants, but still contains approximately 240 million base pairs.

Once the consortium uncovered the genomic sequence of the woodland strawberry, Mark Borodovsky and Paul Burns, both from Georgia Tech, led the efforts in identifying protein-coding genes in the sequence. Using a newly developed pattern recognition program called GeneMark.hmm-ES+, Borodovsky and Burns identified 34,809 genes, of which 55 percent were assigned to gene families.

Further analysis of the woodland strawberry genome revealed genes involved in key biological processes, such as flavor production, flowering and response to disease. Additional examination also revealed a core set of signal transduction elements shared between the strawberry and other plants.

In the long term, breeders will be able to use the information to create plants that can be grown with less environmental impact, better nutritional profiles and larger yields.

The wealth of genetic information collected by this strawberry genome sequencing project will help spur the next wave of research into the improvement of strawberry and other fruit crops," said Borodovsky.