An international team of scientists, mostly Americans, has for the first time deciphered thecomplete sequence of the genome of a legume, thesoy ( Glycine max ), leading to improvements in agricultural crop yields that could increase global food production and power generation.
The genetic sequence of soybeans is made up of1.1 billion base pairs and 46,430 genes, 70 percent more thanArabidopsis -a type of herbaceous plants- and a number of genes similar to that of the poplar genome, which, like soybeans, is a polyploid species, since it has more than two sets of chromosomes.
As the authors explain today in the magazineNature, this research will provide the keys to unveil the genome ofmore than 20,000 legume species, and will help to understand the capacity of this type of plants to transform elements such as carbon dioxide, water, solar energy, nitrogen and minerals into energy, proteins and nutrients for their use by humans and animals. The cultivation of soybeans is one of the most important due to theproteins and fatscontained in its seed and its ability tofix nitrogenin the earth through symbiosis with other microorganisms that inhabit the soil.
Soy is also one of the main seeds used to makebiodiesel, a liquid fuel very similar in properties to diesel oil, but obtained from renewable products such as vegetable oils. Its main producers are the United States, Argentina and Brazil.
