A construction of transposon-insertional mutants for 1,000 genes in Arabidopsis and a phenome analysis

Abstract

We constructed more than 10,000 transposon-mutated lines in Arabidopsis so far. For every independent line, we sequenced the flanking region of Ds insertion, using a high throughput analytic method. Recently, we have started a "phenome project", in which we observe and screen in various phenotypes for each DS insertional line into coding regions in our resources. In a pilot experiment, we are selecting about 1,000 independent lines in which Ds element is located in coding regions of predicted Arabidopsis genes. We are planning to collect phenotypic data by two steps, morphological observation on plant growth and screening results under some environmental conditions. We report the present status of our phenome project and propose an international effort to develop a phenome analysis using gene knockout mutants for every functional gene in Arabidopsis.