Wash. Post, wires, etc: Yawn another genome? Yes, but this is on the bigger side. It’s corn.
I just finished writing a post (next one down) on new news that reads like old news, on old news that some take as new news (the croc one below that), and here’s another on new news that feels like same old same old, but is not. The genome for corn, aka maize, is done and is now published in journals. A genome, one thinks. Hmmm. Corn huh? Well whoop de doo. But one story was enough to assure The Tracker that this one really is worth special note.
At the Washington Post David Brown declares that if biologists “had to pick one living thing as the textbook of how genes work” they might say corn. The results, after all and as he notes, are spreaded across 14 papers in this week’s PLoS Genetics and Science. And Brown backs up his lede with info cited from several sources who lay out this plant’s central role in many genetic lines of research and practical application.
One paper in Science even focusses on popcorn. Nonetheless and despite a flood of press releases – as many as I can recall for any single news event - most reporters appear to have nodded off at word of another genome in the growing annals of such things. A few did write it, sometimes due to local angle.
Other stories:
- Arizona Daily Star – Tom Beal: UA team helps crack genetic code of maize ;
- St. Louis Post Dispatch – Georgina Gustin : Scientists unravel the genetic code of corn ;
- Arizona Republic – Anne Ryman: Research group cracks corn’s genetic code ;
- Scientific American – Katherine Harmon: Cracked Corn: Scientists Solve Maize’s Genetic Maze ; Two plays on word in one hed. The piece is long, detailed, and serious.
- Science News – Tina Hesman Saey: Corn Genome a Maze of Unusual Diversity ;
- Nature News – Elie Dolgin: Maize genome mapped / Sequence should help corn breeders meet global demands for food and fuel ;
Grist for the Mill:
PLoS Genetics Collection Introduction, Links ;
NSF Press Release ;
Plus more, all via EurekAlert, from universities of Iowa ; of Washington-St.Louis ; of Wisconsin-Madison ; of Minnesota ; of Florida ; of Arizona ; of California-Davis ; from Cornell ; and from Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory ;
- Charlie Petit
