Scientists, including a team from the University of Florida, have unveiled a
new tool that will help plant researchers annotate genes quickly and
accurately. Cristopher Henry, a computational biologist at the University of
Chicago who led in creating the database called PlantSEED, said it is an
important step toward designing improved crops, such as rice that grows more
efficiently, or is more drought resistant, or creating perennial corn.

The open-access system PlantSEED integrates data from plant scientists
around the world into a common platform, to achieve better results and
quickly-updated plant models for everyone using them. The creators of the
database said PlantSEED will help plant scientists make better use of genome
information by helping them create consistently accurate models for all
plant genomes contained in the database.

[news.ufl.edu]