The Multinational Coordinated Arabidopsis thaliana
Genome Research
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1990 GOALS
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2000 PROGRESS
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Analysis of the Arabidopsis genome
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Saturation mutagenesis and development of facile methods for transposon tagging to define as many genes as possible |
Over 500,000 lines of chemically-induced and insertion mutants created and made available to research community |
Creation of cDNA and EST libraries representing different tissues and cell types |
Over 150,000 ESTs in GenBank; cDNA libraries readily available and several full length cDNA sequencing projects underway world-wide |
Integration of physical and genetic maps |
Recombinant Inbred map made available in 1993, used to construct YAC, BAC, and P1 physical maps by 1997 |
Mapping of centromeres |
Completed by tetrad analysis in 1998 |
Sequence the entire genome |
Completion of Arabidopsis genome sequence, December 2000 |
Development of Technologies for Plant Genome Studies |
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New transformation technologies |
Vacuum infiltration and Floral dip technologies, coupled with new-generation transformation plasmids (Agrobacterium T-DNA derivatives) make plant transformation easy and efficient |
Un-anticipated goal |
Expression analysis tools such as DNA chips, microarrays and yeast two hybrid systems became available |
Establishment of Biological Resource Centers |
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Establish two centers to serve the world-community of Arabidopsis researchers |
NASC (http://arabidopsis.org.uk/), ABRC (http://www.arabidopsis.org/abrc/index.html), established in 1991 and together handled over 90,000 orders in 2000 |
Information Sharing and Databases |
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Development of an informatics program to facilitate exchange of research results |
TAIR (http://www.arabidopsis.org), AGR (http://ukcrop.net/agr/), Newsgroups (UK based: Arabuk@lists.bbsrc.ac.uk; US based: arab-gen@net.bio.net) |
Development of Human Resources |
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Support postdoctoral fellowships for Arabidopsis research |
Numerous postdoctoral fellows were trained worldwide under various Arabidopsis research programs. Young scientists dominate the Arabidopsis biology field, indicating successful efforts in human resource development. |
Support short-term scientist exchanges and short courses for training in Arabidopsis research techniques |
Annual Arabidopsis Molecular Biology Course held at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory |
Workshops and Symposia |
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Support workshops and symposia to disseminate the results of Arabidopsis research |
Establishment and support of an annual International Conference on Arabidopsis Research |