Gill has spent most of his life with wheat. He grew up on a wheat farm in Punjab, India, and has studied wheat at K-State for 18 years. He has been working on the wheat genome project for more than 10 years and said the project is getting more and more involved. In fact, he said it may only be half over. The reason the project will take so long is that separating genes is a highly complex process.
Scientists have to map the seven chromosome groups that form the genetic material of wheat.
K-State got chromosome five. Each team then has to figure out what some of the genes in each chromosome do, but they have to find the genes first. That's where Justin Faris, a doctoral student in genetics, enters the picture. He said the team has a rough reference map made so far and that the team is trying to use the present map to discover more genes so a more detailed map can be made. Faris explained that finding a gene on a chromosome can be difficult because there is a large amount of DNA, and not all of it has a function like a gene does.