Brassica Genome

Background

Brassica species represent important crops providing a major source of cooking oil, vegetables and condiments across many countries. The species relationship of cultivated Brassicas was described by the “triangle of U” with the three amphidiploid Brassica species B. juncea (AABB, 2n=36), B. napus (AACC, 2n=38) and B. carinata (BBCC, 2n=34) formed through interspecific hybridization between the diploid Brassica species, B. rapa (AA, 2n=20), B. nigra (BB, 2n=16) and B. oleracea (CC, 2n=18). Brassicas are closely related to the model species, Arabidopsis thaliana, for which the genome sequence was determined in 2000.

Brassica species include weedy types and cultivated varieties which demonstrate broad phenotypic plasticity. This is demonstrated by differences between root vegetable crops such as turnip, leafy forms such as Chinese cabbage, and oilseed varieties.

As well as the obvious economic reasons for studying Brassica genomes, with associated improvements in vegetable and oilseed crops, they provide also provide a model to stude the effect of polyploidisation as well as extreme morphological diversity in plant species.

Publications

The first public Brassica genome (B. rapa) was published in 2011 [1] and there are several projects ongoing to produce public genomes for B. oleracea, B. nigra and B. napus, coordinated by the multinational Brassica genome project consortium. Propriatory genome sequences have also been produced for B. rapa, B. oleracea and B. napus.

There is a large and increasing range of Brassica genome resources available on the web. If you cannot find what you are looking for here, you may want to try some of the sites below.

1. Brassica.info: a central resource for Brassica related information
2. BRAD: a B. rapa database and genome viewer
3. autoSNPdb: an EST SNP database
4. CMap: comparative genome and genetic maps

Others: If we have missed a link to your site, please contact the web admin

Conferences

Brassica 2016: 3-6 October 2016, Melbourne Australia

References

1. The Brassica rapa Genome Sequencing Project Consortium. (2011) The genome of the mesopolyploid crop species Brassica rapa. Nature Genetics 43: 1035-1040
2. Marshall DJ, Hayward A, Eales D, Imelfort M, Stiller J, Berkman PJ, Clark T, McKenzie M, Lai K, Duran C, Batley J and Edwards D. (2010) Targeted identification of genomic regions using TAGdb. Plant Methods 6:19

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The site is supported by funds from the University of Western Australia and the Australian Research Council.