A Genome May Reduce Your Carbon Footprint

Abstract

A review. This paper discusses the effect of very cheap sequence data on improvement of switchgrass. A cheap sequence would directly result to a more comprehensive survey of genetic diversity. This would guide conservation efforts to preserve germplasm diversity and allow reconstruction of past speciation events at a more detailed level. Efforts are made with switchgrass and other long lived species, and species with long juvenile phases in a cheap sequence world, to decrease generation time, thus allowing recombination and selection based on marker or sequence data alone. Simultaneous technol. advances in metabolic engineering and fermn. systems will be possible through availability of cheap sequence data, resulting in increased utilization efficiency of lignocellulosic biomass. [on SciFinder(R)]