Canadians at heart of wheat genome breakthrough

Canadian scientists are at the heart of a breakthrough in wheat genetics that could revolutionize how the world’s most important crop can continue to feed a growing global population.

Andrew Sharpe and Curtis Pozniak of the University of Saskatchewan are key co-authors of a paper published Thursday in the journal Science that lays out the first complete and accurate map of the large and complex genome of wheat used for bread.

“This is the full, uninterrupted genome sequence,” said Sharpe, a molecular geneticist. “There’s always been the limitations of the technology, both the sequencing technology and the computational technology, to stitch everything together.”

The paper, a result of 13 years of work by the International Wheat Genome Sequencing Consortium, has 202 authors from 73 research agencies in 20 countries.

The research effort was so large because it needed to be. The wheat genome is five times the size of the human genetic code, which was mapped years ago.

Wheat is also different from other previously sequenced genomes. Its DNA contains long sections of repeated elements nested within each other.

“It’s a billion-piece jigsaw puzzle with 90 per cent blue sky and 10 per cent clouds,” Sharpe said.

“You can imagine putting together a jigsaw puzzle of essentially the same thing.”

Consortium scientists had been proceeding chromosome by chromosome.

Wheat has 21 of them and progress was slow and laborious, if accurate.

The RCMP arrested protesters Thursday as officers enforced a court injunction to dismantle a protest camp and snuff a sacred fire at a site where the Trans Mountain pipeline ends in Burnaby, B.C.

Cpl. Daniela Panesar said police began enforcing an order obtained by the City of Burnaby last week from the B.C. Supreme Court.

An update posted on social media by the detachment said 11 people were removed from the site known as Camp Cloud.

“Five were subsequently arrested and have since been released from custody,” the post said.

Environmental activist Tzeporah Berman, who works with the Watch House group that has an Indigenous protest site near Camp Cloud, said she understood the arrested demonstrators promised to stay away.

“The folks agreed to sign the terms and they were released,” she said in a phone interview.

Officers moved in after continuing to talk with camp residents in the hope that they would obey the injunction and leave within a 48-hour deadline set by the court, the RCMP said in a news release.

That deadline passed Sunday and protesters at the camp said Monday they were prepared to protect a sacred fire, which has been burning since the camp was set up late last year. They also said they were prepared to tie themselves to structures rather than obey the injunction.

B.C. Supreme Court Justice Geoffrey Gomery was specific in the injunction that the fire was to be put out because it was burning in dry conditions near an aviation fuel tank farm.

Camp residents had refused requests to extinguish the fire despite the increasing risk of wildfires.

RCMP placed a large exclusion zone around Camp Cloud on Thursday as the dismantling began. They said they would arrest anyone, including media, who violated the zone.

“Our paramount concern safety,” said Panesar.

“We ensure that everybody is out of the exclusion zone and then the City of Burnaby can come in and start cleaning up the protest site.” is