The International Barley Sequencing Consortium (IBSC) has appointed Eurofins MWG Operon as partner for sequencing and assembling of gene-rich parts of the barley genome.
The project is carried out by multiplex sequencing of pools of BAC clones with Roche GS FLX / 454 technology and customised software solutions.
The barley genome - with 5.3 billion letters of genetic code - is one of the largest in cereal crops and roughly twice the size of the human genome.
An international consortium (IBSC) has recently formed for a joint effort towards deciphering the sequence information of the barley gene space.
Its longer term goal is to develop a high-quality reference sequence of the entire genome - a prerequisite for future accelerated crop improvement by efficient utilisation of barley's natural genetic diversity.
Under the umbrella of GABI (Genome Analysis in the Biological System Plant) financed by the German Ministry for Education and Research (BMBF), four German research institutions - the Leibniz Institute of Plant Genetics and Crop Plant Research (IPK), Gatersleben; Fritz-Lipmann-Institute for Age Research (FLI), Jena; the Munich Information Center for Protein Sequences (MIPS), Munich; and the Julius-Kuhn-Institute (JKI), Quedlinburg - co-operate on the project in scope of the IBSC working agenda.
