Towards a virtual Arabidopsis plant 英文参考文献.docVIP

/2001/2/8/reports/4019.1 Meeting report Towards a virtualArabidopsis plant Benedikt Kost Address: Institute of Molecular Agrobiology, National University of Singapore, 1 Research Link, Singapore 117605. E-mail: benedikt@.sg Published: 31 July 2001 GenomeBiology 2001, 2(8):reports4019.1–4019.4 The electronic version of this article is the complete one and can be found online at /2001/2/8/reports/4019 ? BioMed Central Ltd (Print ISSN 1465-6906; Online ISSN 1465-6914) patterns and knockout phenotypes as well as of biochemical A report on the Royal Society Discussion Meeting “The plant cell: between genome and plant”, London, UK, 13-14 June, 2001. properties, intracellular localization and interaction part- ners of gene products. An organized collection of 100,000 Arabidopsis T-DNA or transposon-insertion lines, together with the sequences of the genomic regions flanking the insertion sites, is expected to be available by 2005 and will allow easy identification of knock-out lines for almost every Arabidopsis gene. Now that most of the Arabidopsis genome is sequenced, plant biologists are left with the task of assigning functions to the large number of newly identified genes. Speakers at this Royal Society Discussion Meeting presented data clari- fying the cellular and developmental functions of a variety of plant genes. All the other speakers at the meeting presented data aimed at elucidating cellular and/or developmental functions of specific plant genes, and thus contributing to the functional map of the Arabidopsis genome that Bevan proposed. Key topics addressed were the regulatory processes and molecu- lar mechanisms involved in pattern formation, cell division and cell differentiation. Several speakers - in particular Keith Roberts (John Innes Centre, Norwich, UK) - have empha- sized the tremendous importance of analyzing gene func- tions at the cellular le