The Genetics of California's Oldest Trees

An article in the San Francisco Chronicle discusses the large multi year project that was conducted to sequence the genomes of the coast redwood and giant sequoia trees, which are some of California's oldest living trees. They are doing this to see which trees are better suited to adapt to a newer, warmer climate, and to see how the trees have adapted over the past years. While sequencing they found that the Coast Redwood is the second largest genome ever sequenced, with about 27 billion base pairs with 9 times the size of the human genome. Now that they have sequenced the genome they plan to observe which genetic traits perform better than others so that they can compile a sort of map for the future conservation of the different species in those areas. Researchers also find this work to be important as about 95% of California's old growth has been wiped out, so there is not much that genetically remains of the different types of species in these areas.   

I think that this article is rather interesting because trees are some of the oldest living organisms on the planet so I think it would be very beneficial to learn all that we can from their genetics while we still can. I also think it was fascinating to learn that almost 95% of the California’s old plant life is nearly gone, which sort of makes it even more imperative that we start to make more progress towards learning about, and conserving them to the best of our current abilities.  

DNA Sequences Reveal Insight on Redwoods

     Coast redwoods are the tallest trees in the world.  However, they also have another magnificent trait, they can sprout from fallen logs, roots and even sprouting from cut stumps.  Researchers from the University of California, Berkeley are uncovering information about patterns of coast redwood clones with a new DNA analysis method. This new method could help forest management and preservation efforts.  The new method will let scientists identify clonal lineages and study how clonal diversity varies throughout the range of species.  Coast redwoods are among the oldest living trees on earth and very little research has been done with the clonal patterns of the coast redwoods.  This is somewhat due to the fact that they are hexaploid, or they have six copies of each homologous chromosome instead of two.
     Lakshmi Narayan, the grad student who is leading the UC Berkeley study says that in addition to the hexaploid condition they also have another challenge that the genotypic identity of clonal plants could possibly cause somatic mutations.  Narayan has designed a new protocol to overcome challenges associated with mutations and the high genetic copy number in the redwood DNA.  Narayan and her team collected DNA from 770 redwoods and have identified about 449 distinct clones.  The key to this new method is the use of short repeating DNA sequences.  The short DNA sequences, known as microsatellites, are present in all living organisms and widely used to distinguish individuals from one another.
     Hopefully this new method will shed light on other species which are still under investigation.  The new method of studying the short DNA sequences might give researchers a better understanding of the redwoods which are such old plants.  We could potentially study how they live so long giving us a better understanding on preserving other species.

Original Article