First plant genome completed
Posted on 14 December 2000
Laboratories in France, the UK, Germany, the US and Japan collaborated for over five years to sequence the DNA blueprint of Arabidopsis thaliana (thale cress) a small relative of mustard. Arabidopsis joins yeast, the nematode worm, the fruitfly, over thirty bacteria and (almost) a person in the genome hall of fame.
The next step will be to provide a research resource that will help to ensure that the UK remains a world leader in plant genetics. Dr Ottoline Leyser, of York's Biology Department, will coordinate the Genomic Arabidopsis Resource Network (GARNet).
Arabidopsis is a model organism. It is cheap, easy to grow and to breed, and has very short life cycles. From its genes researchers have already learned how to protect wheat from disease, to ripen tomatoes and even to double the yields of rape-seed oil. Now that they have the complete instruction book for Arabidopsis, they will be able to apply such knowledge to many other plants. The ramifications of this will affect basic cell and evolutionary biology, biotechnology and even medicine.
The genome of Arabidopsis is packaged into five chromosomes and contains 119 million base pairs - about thirty times fewer than the genome of a human. One of the most surprising findings is how much the Arabidopsis genome repeats itself. Less than half of its DNA is unique - the rest is copies at least once somewhere else in the genome. The fact that such complexity has been found in a plant chosen for its supposed simplicity shows that plant genetics and evolution are far more complex than researchers had thought.