the quantity and properties of starch are important to the baking properties of cultivated wheat and will thus have been under strong selection. Finally, wheat contig 09781 had a SNP at position 368 in the cysteine proteinase domain with predicted phenotypic consequences affecting plant structure development. In cereals, cysteine proteases are known to be important in the laying down of storage proteins [Fahmy et al., 2004]. As with starch, the properties of wheat storage proteins will have come under intense selection during domestication as they are the most important determinant of baking qualities and economic yield. These results, made publicly available to the wheat genomics community at http://www.cerealsdb.uk.net/functional_snps/index.htm, illustrate the potential additional utility of FATHMM in predicting the functional consequences of variants identified in ongoing nonhuman genome sequencing projects (even in species very distantly related to human).
