50 whole barley genomes assembled by the Barnes' group within the BarleyMicroBreed project
50 whole barley genomes has successfully been assembled as part of the BarleyMicroBreed project. This achievement marks a major advance in plant research and brings us closer to the goal of enhancing drought tolerance in barley by optimizing root microbiomes
Barley is a large genome (5 billion base pairs!) with lots of repeating pieces of DNA. Consequently it has been an extremely difficult to build a genome for, making the process a lot slower than for other organisms. With new sequencing techniques (long-read technologies), this has become much simpler. These techniques have allowed for 50 whole barley genomes to be assembled by the Barnes' group at University of Copenhagen within the BarleyMicroBreed project. This represents a new frontier in microbiome research, going beyond screening small snippets of crop DNA to looking at their entire genomes.
Next step
The assemblies will allow us to investigate and edit for specific genes that regulate drought tolerance and the root microbiome together using CRISPR/Cas to assess if they can influence barley's drought tolerance. If successful, these pathways will be manipulated by targeted breeding techniques to improve the drought tolerance of barley lines through optimising their root microbiomes.