Mei found that different plant species have the same DNA code

Recently, the University of Missouri found that the same DNA sequence was found in different regions of various plant genomes Dmitry korkin is an assistant professor in the computer department and the main author of the paper "No one has been able to do research on this scale before." The results were published in PNAS When the White House Office of science and technology policy announced the "big data research and development initiative", the official analysis of a large number of data became the top priority of the country An interdisciplinary team at the University of Missouri has successfully met the challenge of huge data They used pioneering computational methods to find the same DNA sequence among different animal and plant species, thus solving a major biological problem Gavin Conant, research co-author and assistant professor of animal science, said, "our findings help to explain some of the mysteries of plant evolution Basic research on plant genome provides raw materials and improved technology for drug and crop development." previous research found that there are long-term identical codes in different animal DNA But before Mu's new study, computer programs were not enough to find the same sequences in plant DNA, because these same fragments were not on the same site Previous studies have compared the genomes of six animals (dogs, chickens, humans, mice, macaques, rats) Similarly, the genomes of six plants (Arabidopsis, soybeans, rice, clover, sorghum and grapes) were compared 48 computers with 1 million searches per hour were used to complete the genetic sequence comparison, which took 4 weeks and the total number of searches reached 32 billion Although the researchers found that plant species have the same sequence as animal species, they said that these sequences evolved differently "People may want to see convergent evolution, but we don't think so Plants and animals are complex multicellular organisms that need to cope with many of the same environmental conditions, such as breathing air and water intake, coping with climate change, but their basic groups encode solutions to these challenges in different ways," Conant said The Mu team's research laid the foundation for future research on the reasons why animals and plants develop different genetic mechanisms and how these genetic mechanisms work; their basic research also laid the foundation for new discoveries that may improve human life In addition to improving the potential of genetic science in disease resistance, computer programs for coding analysis also contribute to the development of new drugs "The same algorithm can be used to find the same sequence patterns in a whole set of proteins in an organism, which can help to find new targets for existing drugs or study the side effects of these drugs," korkin said