Arabidopsis 2010: A Sequence-Indexed Library of Insertion Mutations in the Arabidopsis Genome

The Salk Institute For Biological Studies, La Jolla CA

Investigators

Abstract

Arabidopsis 2010: A Sequence-Indexed Library of Insertion Mutations in the Arabidopsis Genome. With the availability of the entire Arabidopsis genome sequence, one of the next challenges is to uncover the functions of the more than 25,000 genes in this reference plant. Given the scope of the NSF 2010 program, to identify the function of all Arabidopsis genes in the next decade, an efficient and cost effective approach is necessary to identify mutations in all genes. The goal of this program is to create a sequence-indexed library of mutations in the Arabidopsis genome. The Salk Institute Genome Analysis Laboratory (http://signal.salk.edu) will use high-throughput genome sequencing methods to identify the sites of insertion of Agrobacterium T-DNA in the Arabidopsis genome. T-DNA transformed plants from the Alonso/Crosby/Ecker collection will be grown, genomic DNA will be prepared, T-DNA flanking plant DNA will be recovered and sequenced. Insertion site sequences will be aligned with the Arabidopsis genome sequence and gene annotation will be added. The data will be made available via a web accessible graphical interface-T-DNAExpress-(http://signal.salk.edu/cgi-bin/tdnaexpress) that will provide both text and DNA searches of the insertion sequence database. All DNA sequences will be deposited into GenBank (www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov) and also provided to The Arabidopsis Information Resource (TAIR) (www.arabidopsis.org). Seeds from the T-DNA insertion lines will be deposited with the Arabidopsis Biological Resource Center (ABRC) at Ohio State University:http://www.biosci.ohiostate.edu/~plantbio/Facilities/abrc/ABRCHOME.HTM. The ABRC will propagate and distribute seeds to the community. The creation of a searchable database containing the insertion site information and the availability of the corresponding mutant lines in public stock centers will provide researchers with ready access to mutants in their genes of interest, allowing the testing of hypotheses about gene function at an unprecedented rate.