Closing the gap in plant genomes white paper

Overview

With the importance of studying plant genomes being widely acknowledged, the question arises: why have so few been sequenced? To date just 400 of the 400,000 known plant species (0.1%) have had their genomes sequenced. As we will see, the answer to this question lies in the size and complexity of plant genomes, which make them extremely difficult to sequence using traditional technologies.