Researchers make progress sequencing switchgrass genome

In Texas, researchers at the University of Texas (UT) at Austin, the HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology (HudsonAlpha), and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Joint Genome Institute (JGI), a DOE Office of Science User Facility located at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), has produced a high-quality reference sequence of the complex switchgrass genome using samples collected at these gardens. Building off this work, researchers at all four DOE Bioenergy Research Centers (BRCs)–the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center (GLBRC), the Center for Bioenergy Innovation, the Center for Advanced Bioenergy & Bioproducts Institute, and the Joint BioEnergy Institute–have expanded the network of common gardens and are exploring improvements to switchgrass through more targeted genome editing techniques to customize the crop for additional end products.