Scientists led by Mohammed Bendahmane at the University of Lyon in France sequenced the genome of Rosa chinensis, commonly known as the "Chinese rose," which is native to southwestern China and known for its sweet scent. The genome is the genetic material of a plant or animal that is present in the cells of organisms.
The scientists crushed the young leaves from the Chinese rose plant in order to extract their DNA and then used special equipment to read the genetic code.
Their findings, which were published April 20 in the Nature Genetics journal, revealed multiple previously unknown biochemical steps that roses use to make terpene compounds, which are responsible for generating the scent roses give off. In addition, they identified other genes they could use to shut down the production of anthocyanin pigments, which make roses wilt.
"This genome provides a foundation for understanding the mechanisms governing rose traits and should accelerate improvement in roses, Rosaceae (the rose family of flowering plants) and ornamentals," the authors wrote in the study.
The research could eventually help researchers and breeders engineer better-smelling flowers with longer vase lives through CRISPR-Cas9, or "Clustered Regularly Interspaced Palindromic Repeats," a technique that involves identifying the location of mutations in genes and then uses an enzyme that acts as tiny scissors to cut and remove unwanted portions of DNA along a gene sequence. In other words, you can edit a gene tapestry.
Because the researchers now know which genes are responsible for certain characteristics in flowers, they may be able to use that knowledge to turn off undesirable genes in the genome of roses.
"I hope we will be able to change how these flowers look in the future and make them last longer with more of a scent, which is lost the longer roses stay in a vase," Bendahmane recently said, earth.com reported.