Project name: Selaginella moellendorffii

Description: Selaginella moellendorfii is a non flowering vascular plant belonging to the family Selaginellaceae and class Lycopsida. Members of this class are ancient group of plants that fall between the vascular and nonvascular plants in the evolutionary tree. They are thought to have emerged before the evolution of leaves and roots in vascular plants. Sequencing the genome of S. moellendorfii will provide insight into the early evolution of land plants and will help in gene prediction and annotation studies. It will also aid in our understanding of plant evolution particularly in reference to the growth of vascular tissue in higher plants.Like fern, S. moellendorfii produces spores. It is heterosporous producing two kinds of spores, megaspores and microspores that give rise to the female and male gametophytes, respectively. They are born on the same strobilis, with microsporangia at the bottom. S. moellendorfii has a small diploid genome of about 100 Mb. NSF has funded the construction of BAC library of S. moellendorfii under its Green Plant BAC library Project. In addition, Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute is sequencing its genome by whole genome shotgun method.

Last updated: 2004-09-24