Three subfamilies of grasses, the Ehrhartoideae, Panicoideae and Pooideae, provide the bulk of human nutrition and are poised to become major sources of renewable energy. Here we describe the genome sequence of the wild grass Brachypodium distachyon (Brachypodium), which is, to our knowledge, the first member of the Pooideae subfamily to be sequenced. Comparison of the Brachypodium, rice and sorghum genomes shows a precise history of genome evolution across a broad diversity of the grasses, and establishes a template for analysis of the large genomes of economically important pooid grasses such as wheat. The high-quality genome sequence, coupled with ease of cultivation and transformation, small size and rapid life cycle, will help Brachypodium reach its potential as an important model system for developing new energy and food crops. Read the entire paper here

 Plants possess two myosin classes, VIII and XI. The myosins XI are implicated in organelle transport, F-actin organization, and cell and plant growth. Due to the large size of myosin gene families, knowledge of these molecular motors remains patchy. Using deep transcriptome sequencing and bioinformatics, we systematically investigated myosin genes in two model plants, Arabidopsis thaliana and Brachypodium distachyon. We improved myosin gene models and found that myosin genes undergo alternative splicing. We experimentally validated the gene models for Arabidopsis myosin XI-K that plays the principal role in cell interior dynamics, as well as for its Brachypodium ortholog. We showed that the Arabidopsis gene dubbed HDK (for Headless Derivative of myosin XI-K) that emerged through a partial duplication of the XI-K gene, is developmentally regulated. A gene with similar architecture was also found in Brachypodium. Our analyses revealed two predominant patterns of the myosin gene expression, namely pollen/stamen-specific and ubiquitous expression throughout the plant. We also found that several myosins XI can be rhythmically expressed. Phylogenetic reconstructions indicate that the last common ancestor of the angiosperms possessed two myosins VIII and five myosins XI, many of which underwent additional lineage-specific duplications.