Genome Analysis of a Flowering Plant, Arabidopsis thaliana

Advances in DNA cloning and sequencing technologies have allowed the performance of comprehensive analysis of genetic information in various flowering plants of biological and agronomical importance. Among them, Arabidopsis thaliana, a member of the Brassica family, was chosen as a plant most suitable for genomic sequencing (Goodman et al. 1995; Meinke et al. 1998), because the estimated genome size of 125–130Mb is the smallest among known higher plants and the content of repetitive sequences was assumed to be low. Its short life cycle (average 60 days) and prodigious seed production are the characteristics which make this small plant an ideal model organism in which to analyze metabolism, development, stress responses, and disease resistance in all the flowering plants