The three-year, $29.5 million project to sequence the corn genome began last November and involves Iowa State and three other universities.

Sequencing a genome reveals an organism's genetic blueprint and opens the door for researchers to discover the role each gene plays in the life of the organism.

The sequence data will be generated at the Genome Sequencing Center at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Mo., while other work is performed at the University of Arizona, Tucson, and the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York. The project is funded by the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Departments of Agriculture and the U.S. Department of Energy.

The genome work is expected to help scientists find better ways to produce corn with traits such as enhanced nutrient composition for better food and feed, higher energy content for renewable fuel production, or improved characteristics for use in industrial raw materials, according to the university.

The new Blue Gene/L supercomputer will drastically help with the work, because the research can be done faster, enabling repeated testing, Schnable said. The data will begin pouring out in the next month, he said. "Plant scientists will be making use of this data right away," he said. "The supercomputer is a new step here."