China launches megascience project to decode genetic blueprint of land plants

BEIJING -- Chinese scientists have launched an ambitious international megascience project to decode the genetic blueprint of major land plant lineages, aiming to construct a complete "tree of life" for flora and address pressing global challenges in food security and biodiversity conservation.

The initiative, called PLANeT, was officially launched in Beijing on Wednesday. It is co-led by the Agricultural Genomics Institute at Shenzhen (AGIS) under the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (CAAS) in partnership with the Botanical Society of China, Peking University, and more than 40 other institutions from 15 countries and regions, according to an AGIS press release issued on Thursday.

The project will systematically sample plant orders and families currently missing from genomic databases. By utilizing phylogenomic methods, researchers aim to resolve the contentious evolutionary relationships and divergence times among all major plant groups to draw a comprehensive "tree of life," said Wang Li, a principal researcher of the initiative from AGIS.

A critical bottleneck facing botanical science is that over 99 percent of the estimated 450,000 land plant species lack high-quality reference genomes. This data gap severely constrains humanity's understanding of plant evolution and functional potential.

"PLANeT reminds us of the Human Genome Project launched in 1990. The findings of that decade-long endeavor rapidly advanced human genetics. Today, our PLANeT project shares a similar vision," Wang said.

With massive genomic data to be generated, processing it poses a significant task. "We are introducing AI algorithms and models to enable machines to learn and decipher plants' 'common language,'" Wang explained.

Genomic language foundation models will scan tens of thousands of plant genomes to identify conserved "grammatical" rules in DNA sequences, the organizational logic of regulatory elements, and coding patterns of functional modules.

"Only by deciphering the 'common language' of plants can we understand the fundamental laws of life from 470 million years of plant evolution," said Wang. "These genomic datasets can also help plants on the verge of extinction."

Unlike traditional conservation limited by phenotypic data collection, PLANeT will efficiently identify genetically vulnerable species through genomic indicators, providing robust theoretical support for biodiversity assessments and conservation policymaking.

Furthermore, by mining genes related to disease resistance, drought tolerance and salt tolerance, the project facilitates breeding of climate-resilient "future crops" to safeguard global food security, Wang said.

PLANeT is not only an exploration of cutting-edge science but also a commitment to open and shared international cooperation, AGIS said, aiming to reshape paradigms in life science research while delivering concrete solutions for human health and ecological sustainability.