Featured Organism: Arabidopsis thaliana

Abstract

Arabidopsis is universally acknowledged as the model for dicotyledonous crop plants. Furthermore, some of the information gleaned from this small plant can be used to aid work on monocotyledonous crops. Here we provide an overview of the current state of knowledge and resources for the study of this important model plant, with comments on future prospects in the field from Professor Pamela Green and Dr Sean May. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Summary • Small flowering plant of mustard family ( Brassicaceae ) • Rapid life cycle, high seed production, easy to cultivate • Small genome, 125 Mb, as five chromosomes • Genome sequence completed, 25,498 genes identified • 30% of genes currently have no functional classification • Majority of genome present in two copies, suggesting whole genome duplication