Plant & Animal Genome VI Conference Plant & Animal Genome VI Conference
W78
Monsanto Company, 800 North Lindbergh Blvd., St. Louis, MO USA 63167
Arabidopsis provides key tools for high-throughput functional genomics
capabilities. The ability to use cDNA microarray technology to probe the
expression of thousands of genes at a time allows the assignment of putative
functions to many gene sequences or ESTs and provides enhanced capabilities for
further plant gene discovery and identifying regulatory networks. The
additional use of T-DNA insertional mutagenesis-knockout lines (Yale University
T-DNA collection) provides a second step to understanding function via "lack of
function" mutations and enhances the utility of microarrays. Examples of the
capabilities for both of these tools will be provided as a means to understand
and identify functions of genes in Arabidopsis, and by comparative genomics to
apply information gained with the Arabidopsis model to other plant species. In
addition, the establishment of the Monsanto Arabidopsis Program will be
described and the procedure for gaining access to the Monsanto-Synteni
Arabidopsis cDNA Microarray Program will be outlined.