Secrets of a worm that knots and stunts plant roots are revealed in its genome

News and views
Nematology: terra incognita no more
James P McCarter 1
James P. McCarter is at Divergence Inc., 893 North Warson Road, St. Louis, Missouri 63141, USA and the Washington University Genome Center, 4444 Forest Park
Blvd., St. Louis, Missouri 63108, USA.

The genome sequence of the plant-parasitic roundworm Meloidogyne incognita opens new avenues to boosting food production. If we could select a single agricultural pest to banish, the root-knot nematode would be an excellent choice. Few plant pathogens cause such substantial yield losses, invade so many crop hosts and are as difficult to control. The report of the assembled genome of the root-knot nematode species M. incognita by Abad et al. 1 in this issue provides new insights into this enemy and should aid the development of environmentally sustainable nematicides and transgenic crops that target several important agricultural pests. This study also represents the first genome sequence of a metazoan plant pathogen and of an animal that reproduces asexually. These two features appear to have striking effects on genome composition, including the presence of 61 cell wall–degrading enzymes—a number unprecedented in any animal—and of divergent ancient allelic regions that evolve without recombination...continues in journal

Nature Biotechnology 26, 882 - 884 (2008)
doi:10.1038/nbt0808-882


Pundits thoughts.

Thanks to a GMO Pundit reader for the alert. Root damage is an important cause of bad crop yields, and this report should help progress on this problem -- eventually.