From genome studies to agricultural biotechnology: closing the gap between basic plant science and applied agriculture

Abstract

Doug Cook's research has a dual focus on legume genomics and symbiotic nitrogen fixation. His research interests in legume genomics have evolved from the development of Medicago truncatula as a model system for legume biology in the 1990s, to a bifurcated focus involving the evolution of crop legume genomes and community genomics of adaptive phenotypes in natural populations of M. truncatula. His work on genome evolution spans two time frames, ∼55 millions of years to the last common ancestor of all major legume crops, and the past 10 thousand years through the domestication bottleneck. A byproduct of these studies is genome-scale data sets that interconnect the genomes of crop and model legumes, which in turn enable translation from model species to applied outcomes. Much of his work on legume genomics is focused on India and sub-Saharan Africa, where legumes have an especially important role as sources of human nutrition and soil fertility.