Project name: Avena sativa

Description: Any effort to determine the nucleotide sequence of the cultivated oat genome suffers from three impediments. First, the genome size of cultivated oat is approximately 16000 Mbp. This is more than five times larger than human, with the associated technical difficulties encountered during the Human Genome Initiative. Second, cultivated oat is an allopolyploid of three component genomes - a hexaploid. This fact only partially accounts for the size difference between oat and human. Third, financial support for such an effort, with the obligatory prior development of reagents and a knowledge-base, is directly related to agronomic importance, whether measured in acres under cultivation, bushels produced annually, or pecuniary value of that produced. By any of these criteria, oat in the United States is far behind the other grasses - wheat, barley, corn, and rice.The reduced financial support noted above has been a long-standing feature of cultivated oat research with the consequence of being an impediment to producing genetic maps. The other impediment is a collection of technical conditions. First, in the hexaploid strains translocations between the chromosomes of the component genomes disrupt the ability to presume homosequential gene order among the genomes or between the diploid strains to the hexaploid genomes. Second, only recently has a complete aneuploid series been developed. This reagent enables overcoming the limited ability to discrimate chromosomes on the basis of morphology and has allowed the assignment of the homoeologous groupings. Reducing the barrier imposed by the technical impediments has been the elucidation of "anchor probes", DNA probes for loci that are common to a number of the agronomically important grasses (VanDeynze et al. Theor Appl Genet 1998; 97: 356-369).

Last updated: 2003-11-12