The potato genome is solved

by Chris

The potato genome sequence is reported in this week’s Nature, through the collaborative efforts of 26 research institutes around the world. Like many plants, potato has a polyploid genome, making the assembly of sequence data a challenge. In the case of potato, there are 4 versions of each chromosome, each of which tends to show high diversity, known as heterozygosity. Because all of our commercial potato cultivars are clones, they remain highly vulnerable to disease, so having an entire reference sequence to identify new potential resistance genes from wild relatives will be a real help to breed more resistance traits.

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