Description: This is
a VOA Special English Agriculture Report.
See text below
Text:
Soybeans are eaten by people and fed to animals.
Some farmers grow them to replace lost nitrogen in
the soil.
Soybeans were first grown in Asia thousands of years
ago.
Now scientists have a full genetic map of the
soybean.
This is the first genome completed for a member of
the legume family.
The genome will make it easier to target different
qualities and develop improved crops. Sequencing the
genes, organizing all of them in order, will save
many hours of searching. It will make it easier to
search for what each gene is responsible for.
A report on the genome appeared in the journal
Nature.
Scott Jackson at Purdue University in West
Lafayette, Indiana, helped lead the study team.
He says the kind of soybeans they studied have
forty-six thousand genes. Between seventy and eighty
percent of them, however, are copies of other genes.
Some genes change or disappear over time. But
Professor Jackson explains that soybeans have kept
copies of most of their genes.
This is fairly unusual for plants, he says, and
extremely unusual for animals.
Genes are organized along chromosomes. These contain
molecules of DNA, the building blocks of life.
The researchers found that the sets of chromosomes
in soybeans have copied themselves at least twice.
It happened almost sixty million years ago and again
thirteen million years ago.
Over time, genes develop changes, known as
mutations. Scientists can tell when these changes
happened. The number of mutations over time helped
the team estimate when the duplications in soybeans
took place.
The genome could help genetic engineers develop
soybeans that are processed better by farm animals.
Soybeans contain chemicals called phytates. These
prevent the absorption of phosphorus in the diet.
Pigs and chickens especially are affected.
Undigested phosphorus in their waste can pollute
water supplies. Genetic engineering has already
reduced phytates in soybeans. Now with the gene map
there could be further reductions.
The genome could also help farmers avoid Asian
soybean rust disease, a highly destructive fungus
spread by the wind. The researchers say they found a
gene for resistance to this disease. Now they have
to find a way to use it.
And thats the VOA Special English Agriculture
Report.
You can find transcripts, MP3s and captioned videos
of our reports at voaspecialenglish.com.
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personally reviewed this video and found it appropriate for
the news section of English Global Group. This
is a Voice of America video which covers an interesting
topic in Special English. I would appreciate some feedback from both
students and teachers about this video. You can comment in
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