Plant & Animal Genome IX Conference

Poster: Sequencing & EST
P01_07.html

Arabidopsis thaliana: SEQUENCING PROGRESS AROUND THE CENTROMERE OF CHROMOSOME 5

¹ Lita Annenberg Hazen Genome Sequencing Center, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, 1 Bungtown Road, Cold Spring Harbor, NY, 11724, USA

² Cold Spring Harbor Plant Biology Group, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, 1 Bungtown Road, Cold Spring Harbor, NY, 11724, USA

³ Genome Sequencing Center, Washington University School of Medicine, 4444 Forest Park Blvd., St. Louis, MO, 63108, USA

In the fall of 1996, the Arabidopsis Genome Initiative began a collaborative effort to determine the complete sequence of the Arabidopsis thaliana genome. Last year, we saw one of the first milestones of the project, the complete sequence of chromosome IV. Today, the completion of the entire genome is imminent. Following the completion of our work on the pericentromeric region of chromosome IV, the CSHL/WU consortium (http://www.cshl.org/protarab) joined the Japanese and European consortia in their efforts to complete chromosome V. To that end, our consortium has now completed the sequence of the 3 Mbp region surrounding the centromere of chromosome V from north of KNAT3 to just north of PhyC. This region corresponds to part of YAC contigs 7, 8 and 9 (Schmidt, et al., 1997) and from 9 to 12 Mb on the Kazusa map (Kotani, et al., 1997). This sequence also contains two interesting areas that are still being explored: the true centromere, and a group of 5SrDNA repetative elements. Using BAC end and fingerprint data, these boundaries have been defined and we are continuing our work in these most difficult regions. In addition to the centromeric areas, we have also completed the sequence of a 1 Mbp region north of NIT4. To date, we have contributed well over 13 Mbp of unique sequence to the project and plan to continue our efforts in the future of the AGI.