In an article entitled, “Oil palm genome sequence reveals divergence of interfertile species in Old and New worlds,” Rajinder Singh, Robert A. Martienssen, Ravigadevi Sambanthamurthi and 25 associates affiliated to Malaysian Palm Oil Board and five other institutes of the USA including CSHL, published  in August 15, 2013 issue   of Nature 500: 335–339, the 1.8-gigabase (Gb) genome sequence of the African oil palm Elaeis guineensis (2n=2x=32). They assembled a total of 1.535 Gb sequence and transcriptome data from 30 tissue types. They predicted a minimum of 34,802 genes of which two were characterized as oil biosynthesis genes. They also reported the draft sequence of the closely related South American oil palm, E. oleifera (2n=2x=32) which produces fertile hybrids with the African species. Segmental duplications of chromosome arms are attributed to give rise to the tetraploid palm oil species.