The Stuff of Fluff

BYU researchers are advancing the science behind the white fluff that makes up products from T-shirts to umbrellas. Life science professor Joshua A. Udall (BS ’95) and four BYU students helped unravel the cotton genome, a gold-standard sequence that, says Udall, “can be used as a reference for future research and breeding efforts.” He and his students were listed as authors in an article outlining the genome in Nature. “The map shows us where the genes are,” explains bioinformatics doctoral student Justin T. Page (BS ’12), “so we can design and test hybrids to get quality plants with longer fibers and higher yields and that are resistant to diseases.”