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Humble Weed Becomes Model for Genome Analysis

By Rosalind Schrempf

Arabidopsis thaliana is a small plant in the mustard family that has become a model genetic organism for research in plant biology. By focusing on the plant's molecular genetics, over the past 20 years researchers worldwide have made significant advances in understanding plant growth and development.

Through a tri-agency agreement with the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Office of Basic Energy Sciences has been supporting the U.S. part of the Arabidopsis Genome Initiative, an international effort to sequence the entire genome of Arabidopsis by the year 2000.

The Arabidopsis genome is highly enriched for coding sequences, with one gene every 5kb on average. About half of these genes appear to be closely related in sequence to genes found in other organisms ranging from bacteria to humans. Research with Arabidopsis has shown the important role that analysis of plant genomes can play in understanding basic principles of biology relevant to a variety of species, including humans. For example, a protein complex identified through genetic analysis of the constitutive photomorphogenic class of Arabidopsis mutants has been found throughout eukaryotes and may provide clues to complex signal transduction networks active in humans.

A retinal photoreceptor that may entrain the circadian clock in mammals was recently identified in part on the basis of similarity to the CRY2 photoreceptor of Arabidopsis. The 120-megabase genome of Arabidopsis is organized into five chromosomes and contains an estimated 20,000 genes. More than 30 megabases of annotated genomic sequence has already been deposited in GenBank by a consortium of laboratories in Europe, Japan, and the United States.

Sequencing of the Arabidopsis thaliana Genome at the Stanford DNA Sequence and Technology Center. Contact: J. Michael Cherry, Stanford University, (605) 723-7541, cherry@genome.stanford.edu

Related article:
Genome Issue of Science, 282:662-682, October 23, 1998. Includes a full-color foldout genome map of Arabidopsis.

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