While it probably won't get the attention that the human genome, cow genome or even the cat genome got, the identification of the 46,000+ genes in the soybean genome could be a big deal in a world hungry for more and better food, a cleaner environment and better products.
As announced in the January issue of Nature magazine, a team of scientists including members of The National Center for Soybean Biotechnology at the University of Missouri College of Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources, announced that they have identified the location of approximately 1.1 billion base pairs in the soybean. In comparison, the human genome has approximately 3 billion base pairs.
Reviewed 2013-07-31