Sugarcane is an incredibly important crop, not only for food but for bioenergy production, and has an estimated annual ecomonic value of up to $90 billion USD. Modern sugarcane hybrids can have 100 to 130 chromosomes and a complex ~10 Gb genome. In a new Nature Communications article, Bao et al. used several tools- including GO- to investigate the expantion of genes related to sugar accumulation, smut resistance, and the origin of genes associated with PBD susceptibility.
Read the article: A chromosomal-scale genome assembly of modern cultivated hybrid sugarcane provides insights into origination and evolution