The lyycophytes are an ancient group of vascular plants that first appreared~400 Myr ago and dominated the earth's flora during the Carboniferous era. Lacking true leaves and roots, the lycopsids represent a major node of the plant evolutionary tree and, as the closest living relatives of the earliest vascular plants, are key to understanding the evolution of vascular plants.
The lycophyte Selaginella moellendorffii has a nuclear genome size of less than 127Mbp-the smallest genome size reported for a plant species. DOE's Joint Genome Institute is sequencing the S. moellendorffii genome plus 70,000 ESTs, to be completed by the summer of 2006. A four-fold coverage of the genome is currently available and searchable from this site. These sequences will be useful to researchers interested in comparative genomics and constructing phylogenetic trees.
This website will serve to store and disseminate information about Selaginella to the plant community. Because the accurate annotation of this genome is a process best done by experts in the plant community, we request that anyone using the Selaginella sequences let us know of your results for annotation purposes.
Please register on this site to help us build a list of people interested in Selaginella. We will use this list to persuade the funding agencies of the importance of Selaginella to understanding the biology of higher plants.
- ASPB Selaginella education page