This is Scientific American 60 Second Science.

I'm Cynthia Graber.

Got a minute?

Wheat helped create civilization in the Middle East.

It's a staple crop for 30% of the world's population and now with the publication of four

articles in the journal Science were close to a detailed understanding of the

bread wheat genome. Wheat is tough to sequence. It's gone through multiple

hybridizations making its genome

five times larger than a human one. Plus there are many redundancies. More than 80

percent of the genome is made of repeated DNA sequences. So the typical

whole genome shotgun approach, breaking genomes into segments

and then reassembling them, doesn't work for wheat. Instead, an international consortium devised

another strategy involving physically mapping individual chromosomes and chromosome arms.

One paper details a draft of the entire genome of bread wheat.

Another identifies all the genes on the largest of the plant's 21 chromosomes.

Some 75,000 genes have been mapped. The methods in the second paper

will help scientists map the remaining chromosomes. They say it should take another

three years. Knowing exactly which genes are responsible for talent such as tolerating drought or

improving yields should allow researchers to mine the genome and to quickly produce new and better

wheat varieties to bring us our daily bread.

Thanks for the minute.

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