In a scientific achievement that is important in planning for future climate scenarios, and for protecting some endangered animal species, U.S. Forest Service research geneticist Bryce Richardson and research ecologist Michael Schwartz, have sequenced more than 40 billion base pairs of DNA from 130 samples of plant, animal and fungal species. The tree species were as diverse as tan oak, sugar pine and sagebrush.
This DNA sequencing is more than 12 times the amount of information in the human genome, which has about 3.3 billion base pairs. The massive undertaking, known as the Western Forest Transcriptome Survey, is a collaborative effort between four U.S. Forest Service research stations and four universities.
