Scientists in Japan read the full genome of cyclamen

Cyclamen^*1 is a flower. Many people grow it in pots at home. On October 13, 2026, a group of scientists in Japan said they have read the whole genome^*2 of the wild^*3 cyclamen. They are the first team in the world to do this with very few mistakes.

The study was led by the Kazusa DNA Research Institute, a research center in Japan. Scientists from Saitama Institute of Technology, Kyushu University and Kagawa University, three universities in Japan, also worked on it.

The wild cyclamen has the scientific name Cyclamen persicum. It is the parent of the cyclamen plants that people buy in shops. Its genome has about 1.48 billion base pairs^*4. The team read 98.1 percent of it. They found 40,223 genes^*5. Some of these genes are found only in cyclamen. Other genes are shared with the other plants in the primrose family^*6.

The scientists hope this work will help in several ways. It can show which genes control the shape, color and smell of the flowers. It can also show which genes make the tuber^*7 grow. In the future, growers may use this information to make new kinds of cyclamen faster and more easily.

The study was published in the journal^*8 DNA Research. The authors are Kenta Shirasawa, Yusuke Akita, Yuki Mizunoe and Takejiro Takamura.

1. *1 cyclamen: a small plant with pink, red or white flowers, often grown in pots
2. *2 genome: the full set of genes of a living thing
3. *3 wild: living in nature, not made or grown by people
4. *4 base pairs: the tiny building blocks that genes are made of
5. *5 genes: tiny parts inside a living thing that decide how it grows and looks
6. *6 primrose family: a group of plants that are close relatives of each other
7. *7 tuber: the thick, round part of a plant that grows under the ground
8. *8 journal: a magazine where scientists write about their work