Round Table Seminar: Sean Gordon, John Vogel Lab - Joint Genome Institute, Pangenome of Brachypodium: Insights into natural diversity revealed by a genus of wild grasses.

Pangenome of Brachypodium: Insights into natural diversity revealed by a genus of wild grasses. Brachypodium distachyon is a useful model system for studying grass biology. It has a short life cycle, small plant size, small genome size and it is easy to cultivate and genetically transform. Furthermore, thousands of diverse accessions have been collected and are available. In this seminar I will discuss our efforts to build a pangenome for Brachypodium distachyon. This study leverages 50 maximally diverse, inbred Brachypodium distachyon lines and their de novo annotated genome sequences to define the extent of variable gene and non-coding sequence in this species. Second, I will present our work to create a multiscale comparative genomics platform connecting Brachypodium distachyon intra-species diversity with complete genomes for 3 additional Brachypodium species of differing intra-genus phylogenetic distances. I will illustrate utility of this mutiscale approach as applied to some specific examples.