Content area
Full Text
GENOMICS
The complete DNA sequences of the two wild parents of the garden petunia provide valuable genetic insights into this model plant, and will improve the optimization of other crop plants for agriculture.
The domestication of plants is often thought to apply mainly to food crops, but cultivation has also been widely used to enhance the beauty of ornamental plants. Writing in Nature Plants, Bombarely et al.1 report the genome sequences of two progenitor species of Petunia hybrida, a plant domesticated for its flowers. These genomes are a notable addition to the known sequences of members of the nightshade family (Solanaceae)2. They will enable researchers to unravel fundamental mechanisms in evolution, ecology and gene function, and will help to bring an understanding of the relationships between plant genomes closer.
Petunia is used as a model organism, but one might nonetheless wonder why the genome of a popular flower is of interest. With global consumption of floriculture products estimated to be worth around US$30 billion per year, however, much research is aimed at optimizing productivity, flower shape, colour, vase-life and fragrance. Previous studies3 have identified many of the genes that influence Petunia flower characteristics, highlighting both the evolutionary conservation and diversification of function between different ornamental varieties. Bombarely et al. now provide a powerful platform for the ornamental-flower industry to translate this information to other species, increasing the development of new commercial varieties and species in this economically important research field.
The flowers of wild petunias come in diverse shapes and colours4. Cultivated petunias are a hybrid between two wild species - the pink-flowered Petunia inflata and the whiteflowered Petunia axillaris. Bombarely et al. sequenced both of these genomes, and generated transcriptomic data (which detail all the messenger RNA molecules in a cell) from three unrelated cultivated P. hybrida lines. These data provide a superb resource for analysing not only the genes that confer particular Petunia characteristics, but...