International Consortium Sequences Tomato Genome

The French National Institute for Agricultural Research (INRA) was among the first institutions to approve the international initiative and to provide the initial funding that allowed the project launch. The French contribution was coordinated by a group from INRA Toulouse, which in the first phase of the project, performed the sequencing of the gene-rich regions of tomato chromosome 7. In a second step, INRA scientists moved to a Whole Genome Sequencing strategy taking advantage of the power of the newly established Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) technologies which allowed the rapid coverage of the whole tomato genome. Overall, INRA made a substantial contribution to the sequence generation and to the genome assembly phases which led to the achievement of the ordered and annotated tomato genome sequence.

Together, the sequences provide the most detailed look yet at the functional portions of the tomato genome, revealing the order, orientation, types and relative positions of its 35,000 genes. The sequences will help researchers uncover the relationships between tomato genes and traits and broaden their understanding of how genetics and environmental factors interact to determine a field crop’s health and viability. Tomato is a member of the Solanaceae or nightshade family, and the new sequences are expected to provide reference points helpful for identifying important genes in tomato’s Solanaceae relatives. The group includes potato, pepper, eggplant and petunia and is the world’s most important vegetable plant family in terms of both economic value and production volume. This plant family serves as source of food, spices and medicines.

The sequences also offer insight into how the tomato has diversified and adapted to new environments. They show that the tomato genome expanded abruptly about 60 million years ago, at a time close to one of the large mass extinctions. Subsequently, most of this genetic redundancy was lost. Most of the genes generated during that event have been lost but some of them still control some of the most appealing traits of tomato.

Previous efforts have led to the sequencing of a number of other crop plants, including rice, corn, sorghum, poplar, potato, soybean, grape and Arabidopsis thaliana, a plant widely studied as a model organism.

TGC, a group of over 300 scientists from fourteen countries, was established as a result of a scientific conference organized in 2003 in Washington, DC. Consortium members include scientists from Argentina, Belgium, China, France, Germany, India, Israel, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Spain, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the United States of America.