This year, the JGI helped a collaborative team produce a pangenome for Sorghum bicolor — a collection of many, many sorghum genome sequences. Lined up and analyzed consistently, these data let researchers compare and learn from a range of different versions of this plant. This opens the door to growing sorghum — and other crops — to more effectively produce biofuels and bioproducts.
In the episode, Nadia Shakoor (Donald Danforth Plant Science Center) walks us through growing sorghum from around the world, and the automated phenotyping that made this project possible. John Lovell (HudsonAlpha) and Jeremy Schmutz (JGI, HudsonAlpha) fill in more details of why we’ve long needed a pangenome, and what allowed this project to happen. And keep an eye out for the next episode, which will focus on the analysis behind this project.
Nature: A sorghum pangenome reference improves global crop trait discovery
Phytozome: SorghumPan, the Sorghum bicolor Pan-Genome Reference
Episode chapters:
0:00 The remarkable range of Sorghum bicolor
3:36 Why study sorghum
5:06 Getting from the BTX623 reference to a pangenome
9:50 How this pangenome became possible
12:19 Nadia Shakoor’s JGI-supported CSP New Investigator projects
15:31 Sourcing sorghum lines from all over the world
19:20 Automated phenotyping with drone flyovers
21:40 Next questions
Another episode on sorghum: Back to the Future! A Sorghum Story
A piece on the sorghum pangenome: A Sorghum Pangenome Opens More Doors to Discovery
Submit your own proposal to work with the JGI: http://jointgeno.me/proposals
Episode Transcript: https://jgi.doe.gov/user-science/podcasts/spectrum-sorghum
Our contact info: jgi-comms at lbl dot gov
Sound effects credit: Outdoor Suburb Summer.aif by timgormly -- -- License: Attribution 4.0
