This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: An international team of scientists, including Donald Danforth Plant Science Center member emerita Elizabeth "Toby" Kellogg, Ph.D., has produced a chromosome-level genome assembly that offers a new view of the earliest evolution of grasses, the plant family that includes many of the world's most important food crops. Published in Nature Communications, the study, "Chromosome-level Streptochaeta genome elucidates the ancestral karyotype and allopolyploid origin of grasses," reports the genome of Streptochaeta spicata, a tropical grass from a lineage that branched off near the base of the grass family tree.
Because of that pivotal position, Streptochaeta gives researchers an unusually clear window into the genome of the common ancestor of living grasses. Grasses are the world's most economically important plant family and include rice, wheat, maize, sorghum, barley, sugarcane and many forage and bioenergy crops. Reconstructing their deep evolutionary history gives scientists a foundation for understanding how important traits emerged and changed over time.
That knowledge can inform future efforts to use the genetic diversity of crops and their wild relatives to address challenges in food security and environmental sustainability. By comparing the Streptochaeta genome with genomes from across the grass family, the researchers uncovered new evidence about the ancient genetic events that shaped all living grasses. The findings offer a clearer picture of how grasses evolved and diversified into the plant family that includes many globally important crops.
"Grasses provide much of the food on which people around the world depend, but the earliest chapters of their evolutionary history have been difficult to reconstruct," said Kellogg. "All grasses bear the footprint of a time when the total number of their genes doubled. The effect of that duplication is still visible in all of today's cereal crops.
The grasses have been called a single genetic system, meaning that discoveries in one crop often turn out to apply to others. This study shows how the ancestral grass genome underpins the extraordinary diversity of modern grasses." Yun-Long Liu et al, Chromosome-level Streptochaeta genome elucidates the ancestral karyotype and allopolyploid origin of grasses, Nature Communications (2026). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-026-76979-2 Journal information: Nature Communications Provided by Donald Danforth Plant Science Center BSc Life Sciences & Ecology.
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