BEIJING, Feb. 26 (Xinhua) -- Researchers have constructed a database of plant duplicate genes freely available online.

Plants are capable of duplicating their genes. Gene duplication with high frequency makes genetic variation happen continuously, helps plants adapt to the external changeable environment and promotes species diversity.

To provide a platform for accessing duplicated gene pairs in different plants, the Chinese and American researchers surveyed 141 sequenced plant genomes to give a clear explanation of the consequences of gene and genome duplication and constructed the Plant Duplicate Gene Database.

The database covers the gene information of food crops like soybeans, rice, wheat and corn, as well as gardening crops like pears, peaches, grapes, vegetables and flowers.

The database is expected to provide a foundation for further investigation of the dynamic evolution of duplicate genes, according to the study published in the journal Genome Biology.

The researchers also developed a bioinformatics method to identify different modes of gene duplication in plants.