All about Arabidopsis

Arabidopsis thaliana has grown from a lowly weed into a model organism of lofty stature and spawned a rapidly growing field of research. A wealth of on-line resources has arisen to coordinate the multicenter Arabidopsis sequencing project. The Arabidopsis Genome Initiative (AGI) provides up-to-date information about ongoing efforts to sequence the five chromosomes of A. thaliana. As of March 2000, the AGI has sequenced roughly 86.5% of the genome. Several sites provide access to pooled genome information, but you might also want to visit the individual sequencing centers, including Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory’s Arabidopsis Genome Analysis, the Washington University School of Medicine’s Genome Sequencing Center Arabidopsis thaliana Page, and the Institute for Genomic Research’s Arabidopsis thaliana Database. The Arabidopsis Information Resource (TAIR) will replace the Arabidopsis thaliana Database Project (AtDB); but until TAIR’s first full release, projected for September 2000, users can still access AtDB’s database. With such view and search options as genetic maps, physical maps, and alleles, researchers should have no trouble finding information on this resource. TAIR already has its BLAST service up and running. Selecting the “New GenBank (DNA)” dataset runs a homology search against all sequences submitted within the last month. The “CSHL/WASHU Preliminary (DNA)” data set will search the nightly submissions made by these two sequencing centers. The Kazusa DNA Research Institute, a member of the AGI, has developed the Kazusa Arabidopsis Data Opening Site (KAOS). Visitors can use KAOS’s Arabidopsis Genome Displayer to view the pooled annotated sequence data collected from the AGI. The graphical interface for a particular clone shows BLASTN and BLASTX results, plus predicted coding regions and any corresponding GenBank annotations. The visual alignment of all these data makes it easy to pick out potential genes of interest. The European Scientists Sequencing Arabidopsis (ESSA) coordinates sequencing efforts across several laboratories in the European Union. The Munich Information Centre for Protein Sequences (MIPS) then gathers and analyzes these sequence data, and places them on its web site: the MIPS Arabidopsis thaliana Database (MATDB). In a separate effort from the Arabidopsis Genome Initiative, the University of Minnesota and Michigan State University have taken a different tack with the Arabidopsis cDNA Sequence Analysis Project. These groups are building a database of expressed sequence tags (ESTs) from A. thaliana. Visitors can search sequence annotation at the Search of EST Similarity Analysis Reports, or at Searching Plant ESTs Using BLASTN. To make complete sense of the plethora of sequence data, researchers must undertake the daunting task of functional analyses. The Arabidopsis Functional Genomics Consortium (AFGC) — another collaborative effort — has already begun that work. The AFGC grew out of two technologies: gene knockout and microarray analysis. The Arabidopsis Knockout Facility at the University of Wisconsin Biotechnology Center, offers a fee-based service for researchers. Using their collection of 60,480 Arabidopsis lines that have T-DNA insertions, they will do PCR reactions on pooled lines with your primers. The AFGC Microarray Services is another fee-based tool for functional analyses. The consortium expects their year 2000 arrays to have 7,000–10,000 nonredundant ESTs. The wealth of Arabidopsis web sites coordinates research efforts and facilitates an unprecedented exchange of information. When you see how much Arabidopsis has to offer, you might just turn green with envy.