Brazilian scientists find genes that produce sugar in sugarcane

Plants have genomes that are larger and more complex than those found in some animals, such as reptiles and mammals. Within the plant group, sugar cane has an especially complicated DNA. Until recently, no laboratory had studied and understood this genome completely. This changed at the beginning of the year, when plant geneticist Anete Pereira de Souza and three of her students at the State University of Campinas (Unicamp) located some of the genes that are probably responsible for the production of sugar in the vegetable.