Scientists Sequence Genome of Oil Palm

Posted on July 24, 2013

Scientists have sequenced the genome of the oil palm, a crop that accounts for 45% of the world's edible vegetable oil. The research was published in Nature. It was completed by investigators from the Malaysian Palm Oil Board (MPOB) and Orion Genomics. Bunches of the fruit that yield palm oil are pictured above.

The new research identified the gene, Shell, responsible for the three known shell forms: dura (thick), pisifera (shell-less) and tenera (thin), a hybrid between dura and pisifera palms. Tenera palms contain one mutant and one normal Shell allele.

Rajinder Singh, Ph.D., Head of the Genomics Unit of the Advanced Biotechnology and Breeding Centre, MPOB, said in a statement, "Our team identified an oil yield-related gene called Shell and discovered mutations in this gene that explain the single most important economic trait of the oil palm: how the thickness of its shell correlates to fruit size and oil yield. This discovery may help balance the competing interests of meeting increasing world-wide demand for edible oil and biofuels on the one hand, and of rainforest conservation on the other."

MPOB has amassed more than 100,000 wild oil palm plants over the past five decades. The researchers used this collection, along with carefully designed genetic crosses to identify the Shell gene and its two mutations. One of the reported maps is the 1.8 gigabase sequence of the E. guineensis African oil palm, tallying nearly 35,000 genes. This includes the full set of oil biosynthesis genes and other transcriptional regulators highly expressed in the oil-rich palm fruit.



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