Hot spot on goosegrass genome is a herbicide resistance generator

AHRI Snapshots

In this AHRI Snapshots, we catch up with Principal Research fellow, Dr Qin Yu about her latest paper on glyphosate resistance in goosegrass.
This paper was published in Nature Communications in August 2023, which is an impressive achievement.

This paper is complicated, but essentially the researchers have found a hot spot on the genome of goosegrass that is a herbicide resistance generator.
In this research, the team found that in glyphosate-resistant goosegrass the EPSPS gene was translocated to the sub-telomer region and duplicated many times there, leading to glyphosate resistance occurring.
This work is useful not only in resistance gene discovery, but also in the development of gene-based next generation herbicides, like RNAi, as well as genetic reversal of resistance.
It will also contribute to studying the weediness and adaptation of this global weed species.
Paper: ‘Subtelomeric 5-enolpyruvylshikimate-3-phosphate synthase copy number variation confers glyphosate resistance in Eleusine indica’

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