The grape is a dicotyledonous climbing plant native to central Europe and the Mediterranean. Grapes are cultivated all around the world, making them extremely important food crops. The fruit can be eaten fresh, dried into raisins, or fermented into wine. The wine industry relies on the secondary metabolites produced by grapes to dictate wine flavor, texture, and aroma. Such important compounds include anthocyanins like myrtillin and oenin that give grape skin its color, and the antimicrobial phytoalexin resveratrol. The grape genome is diploid with a size of 487 Mb.
Genome release:
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature06148
Jaillon, O., Aury, J.M., Noel, B., Policriti, A., Clepet, C., Casagrande, A., Choisne, N., Aubourg, S., Vitulo, N., Jubin, C. and Vezzi, A., 2007. The grapevine genome sequence suggests ancestral hexaploidization in major angiosperm phyla. nature, 449(7161), p.463.
Content written by Galyna Vakulenko Summer Intern 2018
