The multiflora rose (Rosa multiflora) is a flowering plant native to Eastern Asia, including Japan. It is a thorny shrub that produces many large white flowers, each with 5 petals. It is one of the wild relatives of cultivated hybrid roses and often used as a rootstock for grafted garden roses. Studying its genome can provide insight into the evolution of roses as well as identify genes to improve garden rose resilience and flower yield. The rosehips from the multiflora rose has been used in traditional medicine for its purgative properties, caused by the flavonoid multinoside A acetate. The multiflora rose genome is diploid and has a size of 740 Mb.
Genome release:
https://academic.oup.com/dnaresearch/advance-article/doi/10.1093/dnares/dsx042/4554776
Nakamura, N., Hirakawa, H., Sato, S., Otagaki, S., Matsumoto, S., Tabata, S. and Tanaka, Y., 2017. Genome structure of Rosa multiflora, a wild ancestor of cultivated roses. DNA Research.
Content written by Galyna Vakulenko Summer Intern 2018
