This is one for the books. Imagine shredding thousands of copies of the same book, then try to reassemble and read the story - the researchers described the scale of the problem of decoding the massive genome of Pinus Taeda or loblolly pine as such.
"It's a huge genome. But the challenge isn't just collecting all the sequence data. The problem is assembling that sequence into order," said professor David Neale, of plant sciences at the University of California. He spearheaded the loblolly pine genome project.
As one of the directors of the loblolly genome assembly team, Professor Steven Salzberg of medicine and biostatistics at the John Hopkins University had the same sentiment. "We were able to assemble the human genome, but it was close to the limit of our ability; seven times bigger was just too much," he admitted.
The team of geneticists finally decoded it by making use of haploid DNA and novel assembly strategies. "We develop a novel strategy to sequence the genome of loblolly pine that combines unique aspects of pine reproductive biology and genome assembly methodology," their research says.
The completion came by fitting back together 16 billion separate fragments in a computational puzzle called genome assembly. It appeared that genome of a loblolly pine is seven times the size of a human genome, which by far becomes the biggest and most complete conifer genome sequenced ever published.
The reason for the loblolly genome being large points at its crammed full of invasive DNA elements that made copies of itself around the genome. From their discovery, such copies and other repetitive sequence fragments compose roughly 82 percent of the genome.
This happens to be the first big trial of a new analysis method developed by University of Maryland researchers. Now, they can fast track genome assembly through the compression of raw sequence data 100-fold. This would also assist scientists into breeding more developed varieties as well as comprehend plants' evolution and diversity.
Reports say the loblolly pine is the most commercially important of the tree species that is found in the U.S., mainly for being the source of most paper products. It may also soon be a feedstock for biofuel as more studies develop.
The director of USDA's National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA), Sonny Ramaswamy, expressed high hopes following the research. "Now that we've unlocked its genetic secrets, loblolly pine will take on even greater importance as we look for new sources of biomass to drive our nation's bioeconomy and ways to increase carbon sequestration and mitigate climate change."
"I applaud the research team for their efforts as their work truly represents the science needed to bring about solutions to some of our greatest challenges," Ramaswamy added.
The NIFA funded said research. The researchers' scientific papers on the draft genome appeared in Genetics and Genome Biology journal.
