An international consortium of more than 30 research institutes, have
deciphered the complex genome sequence of oilseed rape, Brassica napus L.,
more commonly known as canola, the most important oilseed crop in Europe,
Canada, and Australia.

The study showed that apart from the post-Neolithic hybridization that led
to its formation, oilseed rape has one of the most highly duplicated genome
of all flowering plants, because of numerous older polyploidizations that
occurred during its evolution. This phenomenon led to the accumulation of a
great number of genes, 101,000 in total, the highest gene densities of any
previously sequenced organism, four times more than the 20,000-25,000 genes
of humans.

Boulos Chalhoub, from the French National Institute for Agricultural
Research (INRA) who coordinated the research and federated research efforts
within the international consortium said "The main difficulty for oilseed
rape has been to differentiate its different sub-genomes. This has been
achieved by the development of an original sequencing strategy,
bioinformatics tools and the analysis of duplicated gene expression and
their regulation."

The paper presenting the research results is published in the August 22,
2014 edition of Science (DOI: 10.1126/science.1253435).

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