P0070
Draft Assembly and Gene Prediction of the Z. muelleri Genome

Agnieszka Golicz , University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia
Martin Schliep , University of Technology Sydney, Sydney, Australia
Jenny Lee , University of Western Australia, Perth, Australia
Anthony WD Larkum , University of Technology Sydney, Sydney, Australia
Rudy Dolferus , CSIRO, Australia
Philipp Emanuel Bayer , University of Western Australia, Perth, Australia
Kenneth Chan , University of Western Australia, Perth, Australia
Gaurav Sablok , University of Technology Sydney, Sydney, Australia
Peter Ralph , University of Technology Sydney, Sydney, Australia
David Edwards , University of Western Australia, Perth, Australia
Seagrasses are a group of monocotyledonous flowering plants which evolved to live submerged in marine environment. Despite challenges posed by growth in the marine environment, parallel evolution of a terrestrial ancestor occurred multiple times to form seagrass lineages with marine adaptive traits, including horizontal rhizomes for anchorage, leaves lacking stomata and salinity tolerance. Seagrasses have evolved to grow and flourish in marine environment and have become valuable ecosystems.

The genetic mechanism behind the marine adaptation of seagrasses is not well understood. By comparing unassembled genomic content between seagrass and other plant species, the identification of genes that are lost in seagrass shed light on inactive or significantly diverged molecular processes. The assembly and gene prediction of the seagrass genome aim to further characterize evolution of specific adaptation traits. The assembly of a draft seagrass genome also fills the taxonomic gap as one of the few sequenced monocotyledon species outside the grass family.

Back to: Genome Sequencing & ESTs
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