Universiti Sains Malaysia unveils plant genome of billion-dollar global industry
The Centre for chemical biology at the Universiti Sains Malaysia has decoded the first-ever draft of the approximately 2 billion base of genome of the Rubber Tree Hevea brasiliensis using its chemical biology discovery platform. The announcement was made by the Malaysian Minister of Higher education, Dato’ Seri Mohamed Khaled Nordin in a press conference yesterday.
This genome project is the result of an international collaboration led by CCB@USM. The researchers applied three Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) techniques to generate over 60 billion bases of raw data. To validate the assembly and annotation, decoded genes were then used to map out the rubber biosynthetic pathways whose end-products are used world-wide to support a multi-billion dollar global industry.
The genomic data will aid in the development of genetic markers required in rubber tree breeding. Breeding by utilizing genomic data allow faster development of rubber trees with favourable traits such as disease resistance to South American Leaf Blight and white root disease. It can also be used to improve the properties of rubberwood and further enable the rubber tree to be used in medical research.
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