The International Wheat Genome Sequencing Consortium (IWGSC) has engaged a number of countries to tackle the sequencing and assembly of the wheat genome. Australia is taking responsibility for chromosome 7A which contains loci important for Australian conditions.

Bioplatforms Australia will provide the sequencing support for chromosome 7A to complement GRDC investment in this area. Wheat is a hexaploid with three genomes termed A, B and D. In addition to 7A Bioplatforms is providing some sequence data to a pre-existing initiative undertaking the shot-gun sequencing of all the group 7 chromosomes.

The datasets will contain:

• BAC end sequencing of approximately 8,000 BACs (the estimated number for the minimum tiling path) from the wheat 7A chromosome library.
• DNA sequencing data contributing to group 7 arm libraries with 40x sequence coverage.