Genedata Selector™ for Structural and Functional Annotation Across Plant Genomes

Barley is one of the world's most important cereal crops and is highly adaptable to many climates. Due to barley's tolerance to cold, drought, alkali, and salinity, it was one of the first domesticated cereal grains and is widely cultivated in all temperate regions. At 5.1 GB, barley is almost twice the size of the maize genome. Barley belongs to the Triticeae family and is a true diploid, therefore, it is a natural model for genetics and genomics of other family members such as polyploid wheat and rye.
This study demonstrates how new technologies, like next generation sequencing, can be utilized in the agricultural industry’s molecular breeding programs. Efforts to identify genetic variations that create better phenotypes with higher yields, improved resistance to pests or disease, and enhanced nutritional value were among the potential benefits that led to an international collaboration to sequence the barley genome.
Genedata Selector™ is a comprehensive genome management system that supports molecular breeding using sequence, mutation, protein and pathway data along with phenotype information. We show how the system scales to the very large data volumes of plants such as the barley genome. We demonstrate how integrated tools enable RNASeq-based gene annotation refinement and functional annotation based on protein families and motif prediction. Furthermore, Selector‘s analysis and viewing tools are used for comparative genomics of barley with other crops that are better annotated like rice. Finally, gene expression and metabolic data are visualized on pathways across species to assess the metabolic capabilities of the organisms.