USDA-ARS

A reference genome library

By Shaun Bushman, USDA-ARS

Grass plants evenly spaced in research plots

Much like a library contains books of different types and tons of information, a ‘reference genome’ is a library of all the sequences in that genome.  In plant genomes, there are tens of thousands of expressed genes, sequence motifs that pinpoint telomeres and centromeres, large swaths of repeat regions, and other pieces of DNA that do not code proteins but tend to affect gene function.  The recent improvements in DNA sequencing have allowed us to sequence the genome of hard fescue (Festuca brevipila).