When it comes to genetic resources, conifers are among the Boy Scouts of the biosphere: They're prepared.
With four times as much genetic matter as humans and big variations even within the same species, pines and other cone-bearing trees are well equipped to face the challenges of long life spans in the same spot.
"We believe they have so much DNA and so much variation in their DNA because they're ready for anything," said David Neale, a UC Davis professor of plant sciences.
Neale is among 10 researchers nationwide who've received a combined $14 million in National Science Foundation grants to better understand variations in plant genomes.
He's hoping the work could pinpoint genes responsible for disease resistance in different pines, which could be critical to understanding how to best care for and preserve the world's forests.
The wind-swept Monterey pine famous along California's Central Coast and the towering sugar pine scattered throughout Sierra Nevada slopes are among the eight species being probed as part of Neale's latest NSF grant.
The $500,000 project to examine genetic variation in about 1,000 of the 40,000 pine genes began late last year, and should yield results within a few months, Neale said.
It's a follow-up to his larger, $6 million effort, also funded by the science foundation, to pinpoint genetic variations in about 10,000 genes of the loblolly pine, an important pulp and paper tree in the southeastern United States.
The pines' complexity has made unlocking their genetic secrets challenging, but their long life spans, compared with agricultural crops, make the work especially important, Neale said.
The bulk of the $14 million in NSF grants announced Tuesday are devoted to economically important crops, including rice and cotton.
One focus will be to better understand the impacts of polyploidy, the tendency of many plants to hang on to multiple sets of chromosomes when they reproduce, instead of limiting themselves to a double set, as humans and most other animals do.Sacramento Bee
