WHOLE GENOME SHOTGUN SEQUENCING OF ARABIDOPSIS - ANALYSIS AND INSIGHT

Cereon Genomics 45 Sidney Street Cambridge, MA 02139 USA

Due to its physical and genome features, Arabidopsis thaliana has become a model organism for plant biology. As a result, it is the focus of many genomic studies in the public and commerical sectors. In 1996, the publicly funded Arabidopsis Genome Initiative (AGI) began an international and coordinated plan to sequence the genome of the Columbia ecotype and it is expected to be largely complete by the end of 2000. The goal of the public project is to produce a highly accurate and complete genome compiled by shotgun sequencing overlapping large insert clones (BACs, PACs etc) selected from a tiling path across the genome. As a complementary approach, Cereon Genomics has engaged in a whole genome shotgun approach to obtain sequence from most of the genome of the Landsberg erecta ecotype. While not producing the complete and accurate sequence that the AGI project plans, this approach has the advantage of being a cost-effective way of sampling an entire genome quickly. Genes along all five chromosomes are discovered at an equal rate. Many sequence differences are apparent between the two ecotypes, enabling the first genome-wide comparison of two varieties of a higher organism as well as providing a wealth of molecular markers. An overview of the data obtained from this project will be discussed, as well as insights obtained from its analysis.