NEW YORK (AP) – To millions of people, the Christmas tree is a cheerful sight. To scientists who decipher the DNA codes of plants and animals, it’s a monster.
We’re talking about the conifer, the umbrella term for cone-bearing trees like the spruce, fir, pine, cypress and cedar. Apart from their Yuletide popularity, they play big roles in the lumber industry and in healthy forest ecosystems.
Scientists would love to identify the billions of building blocks that make up the DNA of a conifer. That’s called sequencing its genome. Such analysis is a standard tool of biology, and doing it for conif...
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