Project Proposal: OBJECTIVES - Bioinformatic approach to aid the identification and characterization of genes in Arabidopsis thaliana - Evaluate and integrate the accuracy of the Arabidopsis database INTRODUCTION: Arabidopsis thaliana is a model plant for research and has been used wisely to study many aspects of plant biology. There is a significant amount of information about this plant in the database, such as fully sequenced and annotated genomic sequence, extensive expression data, and functional characterization data. This project aims to use this information to facilitate gene identification. The project will focus on a specific region (between 18,500,000 and 19,800,000 AGI) on chromosome V, where a gene involved in root development has been mapped. OBJECTIVES: The project has three types of objectives which are: 1) Identify all possible genes in the region and more importantly, check whether there are any erroneously or incorrectly annotated genes using sequence analysis. 2) Establish gene expression patterns and regulations using available microarray data. 3) And search the literature for evidence of the functional properties of their homologue genes. The analyzes will help build an integrated picture showing the genes in the region along with their expression profiles and functional properties. Such information can be used to guide our experimental strategy towards identifying the affected gene and will provide a case study for using the bioinformatics approach to aid the traditional genetic approach in gene identification. Biological background of Arabidopsis thalianaArabidopsis thaliana is a unique model organism among plants due to its short life cycle (Heh and Bülow 2008) and...... middle of paper......S. Kaul, et al. (1999). "Sequence and analysis of chromosome 2 of the plant Arabidopsis thaliana." Nature 402(6763): 761-768. Meinke, D. W., J. M. Cherry, et al. (1998). “Arabidopsis thaliana: a model plant for genome analysis.” Science 282(5389): 662-682. Rhee, S. Y., W. Beavis, et al. (2003). “The Arabidopsis Information Resource (TAIR): A database of model organisms that provides centralized, curated access to Arabidopsis biology, research materials, and the community.” Nucl. Acids Res. 31(1): 224-228.Sato, S., H. Kotani, et al. (1997). "Structural analysis of Arabidopsis thaliana chromosome 5. I. Sequence characteristics of the 1.6 Mb regions covered by twenty physically assigned P1 clones." DNA Res 4(3): 215-219.Tabata, S., T. Kaneko, et al. (2000). "Sequence and analysis of chromosome 5 of the plant Arabidopsis thaliana." Nature 408(6814): 823-826.