Scientists Stumble Across the Secret of the Sugar Beet

Oh, the sugar beet. A delightful plant native to parts of Europe that accounts for nearly 30 percent of the world's annual sugar production.

Though this vegetable may have helped flavor your cookie or muffin, a recent study looks at how its genome has helped shaped artificial selection--the process by which humans breed other animals and plants for particular traits.

This powerful crop that's been in cultivation all around the world due to its sweetening properties is the first representative of a group of flowering plants known as Caryophllales. These flowers contain up to 11,500 species with a genome sequence.

Background information from the study notes that this group also encompasses other plants of economic importance, such as spinach or quinoa, as well as plants with an interesting biology. (For intstance, this group might even include carnivorous plants or desert plants!)

"Sugar beet has a lower number of gene encoding transcription factors than any flowering plant with already known genome", said Bernd Weisshaar, a principle investigator from Bielefeld University who was involved in the study, via a press release.

Researchers speculate that beets may carry unknown genes involved in transcriptional control. At this time, the plant is estimated to carry 27,421 protein-coding genes within the beet's genome. That's more than are encoded in the human genome!

Thanks to the sugar beet genome sequence, researchers are looking towards future studies that may help determine the molecular dissection of natural and artificial selection, gene regulation and gene-environment interaction, as well as biotechnological approaches to the customization of the crop.

"Sugar beet will be an important cornerstone of future genomic studies involving plants, due to its taxonomic position," the authors note, via the release.

What do you think?

More information regarding the study can be found via the journal Nature.