Examples of vegatative habit, tillers and floral spikes/spikelets, and seeds of Brachypodium distachyon.Brachypodium distachyon (L.) Beauv has many qualities that make it a model for functional genomics studies in temperate grasses, cereals, and dedicated biofuel crops such as Switchgrass. These attributes include small genome (~300Mbp) diploid accessions, tetraploid and hexaploid accessions, a small physical stature, self-fertility, a short lifecycle, and simple growth requirements.

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Initial public release of the Brachypodium distachyon
line Bd21 genome sequence checkpoint assemblies


The US Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute (JGI) has recently completed a “checkpoint assembly” of the Brachypodium whole genome shotgun sequence that covers the genome to an approximate 4x depth. The JGI will continue sequencing to achieve 8x coverage and generate approximately 180,000 ESTs to enable gene finding. The anticipated completion of the 8x sequence is early-mid 2008.

Use of the 4x sequence requires agreement to the conditions described in the link below. The assemblies, which have been subject to automated gene-finding using FGENESH and annotation according to rice gene models and grass transcript assemblies and ESTs, can be browsed in two databases available through the links below, and a BLAST server is available.

Access the JGI 4X draft Brachypodium distachyon genome sequence:

Data Release Policy | BrachyBlast | BrachyBase | ModelCrop.org | Download 4X Assembly Brachy Sequence Extractor

2007 Plant & Animal Genome XV Conference Brachypodium Abstracts