Achievements of the National Plant Genome Initiative and New Horizons in Plant Biology (2008) / Chapter Skim
Currently Skimming:
Summary
Summary
Pages 1-10
The Chapter Skim interface presents what we've algorithmically identified as the most significant single chunk of text within every page in the chapter.
Select key terms on the right to highlight them within pages of the chapter.
From page 1... ...
Subsequent modern plant breeding has led to greatly enhanced productivity and incorporation of new, desirable traits into a wide variety of plants used by humans for diverse applications. Despite the long history of human-plant interactions, investment in plant biology research has never been as important as it is today, as a growing global human population increases the demand on plant production in the face of decreased fresh water supplies and societal pressures to maintain the quality of arable and "natural" land.
|
From page 2... ...
• Recommend future research directions and objectives for NPGI. recognition that research in plant genomics provides a foundation for rapid, fundamental, and novel insights into the means by which plants grow and re produce, produce organs and tissues essential to human nutrition and energy production, adapt to different and sometimes stressful environments, and help stabilize ecosystems.
|
From page 3... ...
Plant genome scientists, as a community, have made excellent use of the synergies provided by exploitation of an easily manipulable model species, Arabidopsis, to elucidate basic biological principles that are likely to be broadly operative across plant biology and can thus facilitate rapid applications to crop genomics and improvement. In fact, it is difficult to list all the major breakthroughs that the analyses of plant genomes and gene function have enabled in the last nine years across NPGI and the NSF Arabidopsis 2010 Project.
|
From page 4... ...
The publication record shows that NPGI research is not only a leading source of plant biology knowledge, but also a source of research that is broadly applicable to the wider biosciences community. Basic research funded by NPGI to date has served as the springboard for several applied, agency-specific, mission-oriented programs that capitalize on either new funding from the public or on public-private partnerships.
|
From page 5... ...
To miss the opportunity to capture and increase the momentum of the last 10 years would diffuse the tremendous gains made thus far, and sacrifice vital routes to tackle national and global problems that could be addressed with plant-based resources. RECOMMENDATIONS AND GOALS: NEW HORIZONS IN PLANT GENOMICS The committee's major recommendations incorporate a significant broadening of the NPGI mission to include the basic biology of economically relevant traits in models and crop species, deeper investigations into plant diversity and plant adaptation to various ecological niches, and continued expansion of translation to breeders and farmers.
|
From page 6... ...
The conserved nature of genetic networks across species and the ability to transfer knowledge from one species to another via comparative genomics and subsequent marker-assisted breeding, and by direct genetic engineering in many cases, can lead to potential major innovations in crop improvement. The committee's recommendations for an expanded NPGI will require re search at scales ranging from single principal investigators, across collabora tions of investigators at multiple institutions, to large dedicated data produc tion centers, all of which will use experimental methods of inquiry that span the entire scale of plant biology.
|
From page 7... ...
Expand plant genome sequencing, plant-associated microbial sequencing, and plant-associated metagenome sequencing, and associated high quality annotation, by (a) using the Department of Energy's Joint Genome Institute's sequencing capacity to generally serve plant sciences and (b)
|
From page 8... ...
CONCLUSION Plant genome sciences, and plant biology as a whole, are vital enterprises that contribute significantly to human health, energy security, and enlightened and careful environmental stewardship. Because photosynthetic organisms play a central role in all of the Earth's major ecosystems, understanding how plants function, and how to modify and improve their ability to carry out specific physi ological processes -- the goals of plant genome research -- are likely to have deep and far-reaching ultimate environmental impacts.
|
From page 9... ...
Plant genome science research can play a large part in this important revolution.
|
Key Terms
This material may be derived from roughly machine-read images, and so is provided only to facilitate research.
More
information on Chapter Skim is available.