Plant & Animal Genome V Conference
Town & Country Hotel, San Diego, CA, January 12-16, 1997.
PAG-V: W16 - <i>Arabidopsis thaliana</i> GENOME ANALYSIS
W16
Arabidopsis thaliana GENOME ANALYSIS
MCCOMBIE, W. RICHARD(1), Muhammad Lodhi(1), Arthur Johnson(1), Robert Martienssen(1), Ellson Chen(2), Richard K. Wilson(3)
1. Cold Spring Harbor Lab, P. O. Box 100 , Cold Spring Harbor, NY, 11724
2. Applied Biosystems Division of Perkin Elmer, ACGT Group, Building 200, 850 Lincoln Center Drive, Foster City, CA
3. Genome Sequencing Center, Washington University, 4444 Forest Park Blvd., St. Louis, MO 63108
The genome of the plant Arabidopsis thaliana consists of 5 chromosomes with a total size of about 100 Mb. This sequence contains the information necessary for the growth, development and reproduction of a higher plant. Given this, and the extremely large size of many other plant genomes, Arabidopsis is the ideal model on which to base the analysis of plant genomes. A large portion of the genome of Arabidopsis has been cloned on overlapping YACs which have been correlated with the genetic map of the organism. The Cold Spring Harbor Plant Biology group has developed a set of transposon based tools to study the expression of genes in this organism. Given these factors, we have begun a mapped based sequencing of the Arabidopsis genome. We are now part of an international, coordinated effort to sequence the genome of this organism. We have began our efforts by sequencing two areas on the short arm of chromosome IV. We have continued sequencing on this chromosome and have also extended our efforts to chromosome V. While the initial sequencing was cosmid based we are primarily sequecing from bacterial artificial chromosome (BAC) based clones at the present time. The sequencing strategy uses M13 shotgun sequencing and ABI automated sequencers. Our sequencing plan calls for us to rapidly scale-up our sequencing and complete 6.5-7 million bases by September of 1999. We have already sequenced in excess of 250 kilobases from these regions. The overall gene density of the Arabidopsis genome is on the order of one gene/5Kb. As predicted, this sequence yields a number of interesting database matches to known genes from other species. We will continue sequencing in these areas and continue to make our sequence available to the community via the World Wide Web as it is generated, with no delay prior to public availability.