A.

thaliana is a small flowering plant that is widely used as a model organism in plant biology. Member of the mustard (Brassicaceae) family Common name- Wall cress or Mouse-ear cress

Small genome -125 Mb, sequenced in the year 2000 Extensive genetic and physical maps of all 5 chromosomes A rapid life cycle (about 6 weeks from germination to mature seed) Prolific seed production and easy cultivation in restricted space. Efficient transformation methods utilizing Agrobacterium tumefaciens. A large number of mutant lines and genomic resources many of which are available from Stock Centers(ABRC, Ohio;NASC,UK)

 A.

thaliana was discovered by Johannes Thal in the Harz mountains in Germany He called it Pilosella siliquosa, later name changed to A. thaliana F. Laibach first summarized the potential of A. thaliana as a model organism for genetics in 1943.

 Bacterial

artificial chromosome (BAC), phage (P1) and Transformation-competent artificial chromosome (TAC) libraries as the primary substrates for sequencing. maps of the genome of accession Columbia was first assembled by BAC clones.

Physical

Total length of sequenced regions, which extend from telomeres to the 180-base-pair centromeric repeats, is 115,409,949 (bp) The unsequenced centromeric and rDNA repeat regions measure roughly 10 megabases (Mb), yielding a genome size of about 125Mb Features such as gene density, expression levels and repeat distribution are very consistent across the five chromosomes

 Arabidopsis

has a significantly greater extent of tandem gene duplications and segmental duplications, which account for its larger gene set.

 To

assess the similarities and differences of the Arabidopsis gene complement compared with other sequenced eukaryotic genomes, functional categories were assigned to the complete set of Arabidopsis genes. The functions of 69% of the genes were classified according to sequence similarity to proteins of known function in all organisms.

 17.6%

and 11.4% of gene products were predicted to be targeted to the secretory pathway and mitochondria in Arabidopsis 14% of the gene products are likely to be targeted to the chloroplast Significant proportion of genes with predicted functions involved in metabolism, gene regulation and defence.

 Approximately

31% of the 25,498 genes products could not be assigned to functional categories.

 The

Arabidopsis genome sequence provides a complete view of chromosomal organization and clues to its evolutionary history The majority of the Arabidopsis genome is represented in duplicated segments, it appears most likely that Arabidopsis, like maize, had a tetraploid ancestor.

 To

identify commonly occurring changes in genome microstructure. Enables the development of new molecular markers for genetic mapping Comparative analysis was done between accession Columbia (Col-0) and accession Landsberg erecta

 They

identified two classes of differences between the sequences: single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), and insertiondeletions (InDels). Sequence polymorphisms between accessions of Arabidopsis in both coding and non-coding regions.

 Transposons

in Arabidopsis account for at least 10% of the genome

more information log on to: http://www.arabidopsis.org/index.jsp Analysis of the genome sequence of the flowering plant Arabidopsis thaliana : Nature:408
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