The researchers analysed DNA from around 2,500 seedlings that germinated in 2013, and identified promising varieties based on genetic sequences that they had associated with particular traits.
Cancer researchers, for instance, recently created a video game inspired by Space Invaders that allowed people to participate in the crunching of complex data on their smartphones by guiding a craft through space along paths based on genetic sequencing from breast cancer patients.
Methods based on genetic sequencing to monitor drug-resistance mutations in human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) require expensive instruments and are only capable of detecting mutant strains comprising >20% of virus populations.
Commonly, the sequences are grouped into operational taxonomic units based on genetic distance (sequence similarity) instead of genetic change (patristic distance).
Six putative genes in the scytonemin gene cluster (NpR1276 to NpR1271 in the N. punctiforme genome), with no previously known protein function and annotated in this study as scyA to scyF, are likely involved in the assembly of scytonemin from central metabolites, based on genetic, biochemical, and sequence similarity evidence.
The major bottle-neck of the phenotype-driven approach used to be the identification of the causative mutation based on genetic mapping followed by sequencing of candidate genes.
To facilitate data visualization, we generated a quasi-genomic sequence based on genetic distance and displayed the resultant chromosomal groups using GBrowse (http://www.Gbrowse.org).org
