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Corn. You should care about corn.

It's human food in many forms, from the ubiquitous corn sweetener in nearly all processed foods and soft drinks, to starch, booze and, occasionally, even corn on the cob.

It's also the main food for most of the animals that humans eat.

And, increasingly, it's turned into fuel for our internal combustion engines, possibly an answer to the country's thirst for oil and its impact on international relations.

It's a world crop, and the largest crop in the United States.

Now, scientists at the University of Arizona's BIO5 Institute, Washington University in St. Louis, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York and Iowa State University have "looked under the hood" to decipher the genetic code that makes corn grow, adapt to conditions and resist or be susceptible to disease. The work was done under a $29.5 million National Science Foundation Grant over the last three years by more than 50 people, including 10 people working full time at the UA.

Understanding the genetic code — the "blueprint" — for corn should allow plant scientists to manipulate the genes to change corn and other cereal plants to meet the needs of the global population boom, says one of the lead scientists on the project.

It's a big deal, for a number of reasons, says Rod Wing, a University of Arizona plant-sciences researcher and professor, and director of the Arizona Genomics Institute.

Increasingly harsh facts of modern life are bearing down on agriculture worldwide, Wing says.

There will be more mouths to feed with crops grown on less land, with less water and poorer soil, he says.

Corn and other crops will have to be manipulated, their genes "tweaked" so they can thrive in these conditions, Wing says.

And corn has a particularly large amount of genetic information to allow it to adapt to conditions.

Because of corn's massive genome — with its billions of "letters" written in DNA's chemical code — it can be of use in understanding other plants, including that worldwide staple, rice.

"Corn is a cereal, like rice," Wing says. "All shared a common ancestor 50 million years ago.

"If we can compare the sequences of rice and corn, we'll learn much more about the biology of cereals in general.

"The population that depends on rice is going to double in 25 years," Wing says. "Rice growers are tasked with the problem of doubling production on less land, with less water and poorer soil.

"Corn and rice comprise about 80 percent of the food in the world," Wing says. "By understanding these organisms more precisely, (we should be) able to have a more stable food supply, meet the needs of the future — and maybe the energy demands."

And while producing ethanol fuel from corn is not an efficient process as it's done now, developments in turning plant biomass into fuel could eventually use the entire corn plant, from top to roots, making the process more efficient.

Using the gene-sequencing information, scientists could create a strain of corn optimized for its food or fuel production, or its ability to survive drought or other adverse conditions.

A plant contains as much or, in the case of corn, more genetic information than a human.

"Do you want to know why?" asks BIO5 Institute Director Vicki Chandler, a maize geneticist.

Well, if you've ever wondered how plants as different as a palm tree, a red rose and crab grass can grow out of the same soil, drinking in the same water, breathing the same air and bathing in the same sunlight, you're onto something.

"Plants growing in the ground with a few basic nutrients can take sunlight and water and make everything they need," Chandler says. "In order to do that, they need a lot of genes we don't need because we eat what we need."

But a lot of those genes aren't needed at any one time, so they are "switched off" while others are "switched on."

"It's called gene regulation," says Chandler, and it happens to be Chandler's area of expertise.

A full draft — 95 percent of the genome — was officially released Thursday in Washington, D.C., at the 50th Annual Maize Genetics Conference.

"It's huge," Chandler says. "This has been on the drawing boards for the National Corn Growers Association and a number of other constituencies across the country since the mid-'90s.

"Maize is in the U.S. the most economically important crop, and it's a huge source of food, fiber and animal feed. And it's also being used in some of the bio fuels area."