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Century-old genetics mystery of Mendel's peas solved
Researchers pinpoint the genes responsible for the final three pea traits studied by the famed citizen scientist.
In a paper published on 23 April in Nature 1, researchers add a fresh chapter to Mendel’s pivotal story, perhaps in the process launching a new era in the genomic study of peas, which are a popular source of plant-based protein. Noam Chayut, an applied crop geneticist at the John Innes Centre (JIC) in Norwich, UK, and a co-author of the current paper, says he and the other team members were intrigued by the enduring mystery and decided that “sequencing and computational tools had advanced enough to tackle the final three” genes. Using several methods, including selective breeding of pea plants and genome-wide association studies, which probe each genome for differences in the number and location of SNPs, the group identified the genes linked to the three remaining traits.
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