Genomics project aims to create a "virtual ...( June 1 2000 -- A group of plant ...)

June 1, 2000 -- A group of plant physiologists is calling for a major scientific effort to understand the biological machinery of a plant in enough detail to construct a virtual plant that can be used to examine every aspect of a plant's development.

In a report on The 2010 Project, which is available on the Web at http://www.arabidopsis.org/workshop1.html, the authors propose a multinational effort to determine the function of all the genes and proteins in the model plant, Arabidopsis thaliana. A summary of the report on The 2010 Project workshop, which was held in January at The Salk Institute for Biological Studies, is published in the June 2000 issue of Plant Physiology. By publishing working drafts of The 2010 Project report, the researchers hope to elicit comments from members of the research community that will be considered before the report is formally submitted to the National Science Foundation (NSF) this summer.

"The goal of the 2010 Project is to understand all the genes of Arabidopsis. This is the only way we are going to understand what makes a plant a plant," said workshop co-chair Joanne Chory, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) investigator at The Salk Institute. "As with the Human Genome Project, knowing the gene sequence is just a start. Understanding what the genes are doing is the real challenge that we're all facing."

The full sequence of the 25,000 genes of Arabidopsis — the first flowering plant to be completely sequenced — will be available around mid-2000. The workshop, which was sponsored by the NSF, aimed at charting a scientific course to take advantage of the complete gene sequence once it becomes available. Writing in Plant Physiology, the authors state, "The ultimate goal of The 2010 Project is to broaden the
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Contact: Jim Keeley
keeleyj@hhmi.org
301-215-8858
Howard Hughes Medical Institute
31-May-2000