Skip to main content
Premium Trial:

Request an Annual Quote

Donald Danforth Plant Science Center Partners With Benson Hill on Sorghum Genome Analysis

NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – Benson Hill Biosystems has partnered with the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center (DDPSC) to use the firm's Breed software in advancing sorghum genetics research.

The DDPSC's Transportation Energy Resources from Renewable Agriculture Phenotyping Reference Platform(TERRA-REF) program, funded by an $8 million grant from the US Department of Energy Advanced Research Program, is trying to develop improved sorghum varieties for use as feedstock and as an alternative energy source. The project will sequence more than 400 sorghum varieties.

St. Louis-based Benson Hill's Breed software application, based on its CropOS cloud-based informatics platform, will help in analyzing the data and in advancing the sorghum breeding program.

"Leveraging Breed in this partnership represents the convergence of disciplines that we need in plant science to meet our global food and energy goals," DDPSC President Jim Carrington said in a statement. "This is a terrific example of what the next generation of plant science will look like and platforms like Crops will play a major role in helping us use rapidly expanding and diverse data to deliver sustainable crop improvements."

The Scan

International Team Proposes Checklist for Returning Genomic Research Results

Researchers in the European Journal of Human Genetics present a checklist to guide the return of genomic research results to study participants.

Study Presents New Insights Into How Cancer Cells Overcome Telomere Shortening

Researchers report in Nucleic Acids Research that ATRX-deficient cancer cells have increased activity of the alternative lengthening of telomeres pathway.

Researchers Link Telomere Length With Alzheimer's Disease

Within UK Biobank participants, longer leukocyte telomere length is associated with a reduced risk of dementia, according to a new study in PLOS One.

Nucleotide Base Detected on Near-Earth Asteroid

Among other intriguing compounds, researchers find the nucleotide uracil, a component of RNA sequences, in samples collected from the near-Earth asteroid Ryugu, as they report in Nature Communications.