About the Lathyrus Genome Project

Grass pea (Lathyrus sativus) is a protein-rich, cool-season legume crop cultivated as a food crop mainly in the Indian subcontinent and Ethiopia and as a feed and fodder crop in other parts of the world. Lathyrus has a variety of beneficial agronomic traits such as tolerance to drought, salinity, resistance to waterlogging, growing well in semiarid and problem soils, resistance to insects and biotic stresses, and being a legume crop; it can fix nitrogen. However, the presence of a non-protein amino acid β-N-oxalyl-L-α, β-diaminopropionic acid (β-ODAP) and its association with neurolathyrism is a significant impediment to popularizing this crop. Therefore, understanding neurotoxin metabolism and its reduction in the seeds is a priority research area for this crop. Lathyrus genome sequencing project is undertaken to harness the vast gene pool of this hardy legume for its improvement and for the improvement of crops of closely related genera such as Lens, Pisum, and Vicia.

General Instructions for accessing the database

The Lathyrus Genome project database primarily offers three ways to access the data viz. via a sequence search (input: protein/DNA sequence), an ortholog search tool, and direct download of the assembled genome, and associated files.

1. Genome Browser – The genome browser enables the search of specific regions in the genome for their gene content. Input is in the form of chromosomal regions.
2. Sequence search – The sequence search option offers a BLAST search of the Lathyrus CDS, mRNA, protein and whole genome sequences via a Sequence Server implementation. Input can either be protein or DNA sequences in FASTA format.
3. Ortholog search – The ortholog search options allows the user to search for orthologs of Lathyrus genes/proteins in other legume crops. The user is required to first identify the Gene ID of interest using the Sequence search option. The Lathyrus Gene ID can then be used to search for corresponding orthologs. Additionally, the ortholog sequences from the legume species corresponding to a Lathyrus Gene ID are available for download from the orthology search page.
4. Downloads – The downloads section consists of direct download links to the whole genome assembly, mRNA, CDS, and protein sequences of Lathyrus sativus.
5. Database citation – S. Rajarammohan, L. Kaur, A. Verma, D. Singh, S. Mantri, J. K. Roy, T. R. Sharma, A. Pareek & P. K. Kandoth, "Genome sequencing and assembly of Lathyrus sativus - a nutrient-rich hardy legume crop", Scientific Data, Volume 10, Issue 1, Pages 32 [ Link ]