Saturday, September 06, 2014

The Coffee Genome Has Been Sequenced. Here's What That Means For You.

io9 writes The Coffee Genome Has Been Sequenced. Here's What That Means For You. "It's safe to wager, then, that coffee would not be so popular were it not for its caffeine content. And that's what makes the publication of the C. canephora genome so exciting. The researchers, it turns out, have done more than identified over 25,000 protein-making genes in the robusta coffee genome. By examining which families of genes expanded in the course of coffee's evolution, and comparing its genome to those of other plant species, researchers co-led by University of Buffalo genome scientist Victor Albert, were able to, in his words, 'learn about coffee's independent pathway in evolution, including — excitingly — the story of caffeine.'"

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