Genome Digest

What researchers are learning as they sequence, map, and decode species’ genomes

Written byCatherine Offord

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A meadow of seagrass (Z. marina)CHRISTOPHER BOSTROM (VIA EUREKALERT)

Species: Zostera marina
Genome size: 202.3 million base pairs

Seagrass, Zostera marina, provides the basis for some of the most biodiverse ecosystems on the planet, growing in meadows that offer habitats for marine animals and protect the coastline from erosion. But seagrass is also evolutionarily unique, in that it is the only flowering plant to have transitioned from land to sea. Now its genome, published last month (January 27) in Nature, is starting to reveal how it made the switch.

“They have re-engineered themselves,” study coauthor Jeanine Olsen of the University of Groningen, the Netherlands, said of the plants in a statement. She added that a suite of genetic adaptations to marine life means that “there’s no way back to land for seagrass.”

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Meet the Author

Catherine Offord
After undergraduate research with spiders at the University of Oxford and graduate research with ants at Princeton University, Catherine left arthropods and academia to become a science journalist. She has worked in various guises at The Scientist since 2016. As Senior Editor, she wrote articles for the online and print publications, and edited the magazine’s Notebook, Careers, and Bio Business sections. She reports on subjects ranging from cellular and molecular biology to research misconduct and science policy. Find more of her work at her website.
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