What is Arabidopsis?
Arabidopsis is a small annual weed which belongs to the Brassicaceae
(mustard or crucifer) family. Several species belong to the Arabidopsis
genus, the most well known member and the one most extensively used in
research is Arabidopsis thaliana (L.) Heyhn 2n=10 (common name
'thale cress' or 'mouse eared cress').
The model organism Arabidopsis thaliana, although not
an economically important crop, is particularly suited to the molecular
dissection of plant development due to its small size, rapid life cycle,
small simple genome, prolific seed production and the availability of
numerous mutants and transformed populations.
Arabidopsis and UK CropNet
An international programme of research, known as the
Arabidopsis Genome
Programme has been developed to study this model organism, with several
elements of this programme being conducted in the UK and/or other
European Countries. The focus of UK CropNet is to take all the information
that is being generated by the Arabidopsis Programme, primarily in the UK,
but also in Europe and to integrate it in a meaningful way with other
Arabidopsis information resource providers and provide added-value to the
information as a resource for the Arabidopsis and wider research community.
The development of Arabidopsis thaliana information
at the University of Nottingham
will centre on:
- Continual integration of new Arabidopsis sequence data (both nucleotide
and protein), from all available ecotypes (not just the Columbia ecotype) and
also from other Arabidopsis species.
- Following the completion of the genome sequence, new sequence-map displays
will be developed to allow sequence browsing along the completed chromosome
sequences.
- Integration of other sequence information such as sequenced insertion sites.
- The Lister and Dean
recombinant inbred maps curated at the University of Nottingham by Sean May
- The seed resource information from the
Nottingham Arabidopsis Stock Centre.
- Developing more extensive links between different Arabidopsis resources at
NASC
The information included in the network project will have a
wide impact on crop research since the organisation of the genomes between
closely and less closely related organisms are conserved. Hence, it is possible
to build inferences from what is found in Arabidopsis about the possible
organisation of genes in economically important crop plants, particularly the
brassicas. To get the most out of this kind of information a combined
Arabidopsis/brassica database is also being constructed. In addition, the
information generated through the sequencing projects will be a key tool for the
development of structure/function analyses within Arabidopsis and crops.
The use of the model species Arabidopsis to isolate and
understand the mode of action of genes of agronomic value is important to
future plans of many crop genome projects in the UK. The development of
databases able to discern true homology among candidate genes in diverse
species is central to the exploitation of this work. New displays will be
developed using Java to aid and highlight comparative analysis.
