Omics and Bioinformatics: An Essential Toolbox for Systems Analyses of Plant Functions Beyond 2010

Abstract

Over the past 20 years, Arabidopsis has been the most important model in plant biology worldwide. Its genome sequence was determined with high reliability in 2000 by the Arabidopsis Genome Initiative. This sequence information has become the fundamental basis for all plant scientists when analyzing genomic information and relating it to plant functions. Indeed, most plant scientists would agree that the year 2000 was the key turning point that determined the direction of plant research for the subsequent decade. Following Arabidopsis, the next plant genome to be fully sequenced with high reliability was rice, accomplished by the International Rice Genome Sequencing Project in 2004 (International Rice Genome Sequencing Project 2005) (http://rgp.dna.affrc.go.jp/E/IRGSP/index.html). Rice is a model crop of particular importance for analyzing gene functions in breeding. Japanese plant scientists made a significant contributions to both these genome sequencing projects. The Kazusa DNA Research Institute was heavily involved in the Arabidopsis genome sequence project, and the National Institute for Agrobiological Sciences (NIAS) played a key role in the rice genome sequence project.