A New Method for Phenome Analysis of Arabidopsis thaliana: Collection of Morphological Information by Using 3-Dimensional Laser Scanner

摘要

Recent progress in plant genome research has enhanced the international competitions for the elucidation of gene functions mainly by mutant analyses. The discovery of valuable mutants is largely relied on the establishment of detail criteria and observation of phenotypic traits of mutants. Especially for the analyses of quantitative traits (QTLs) such as plant growth rates, harvest amount and seed sizes are combination of several gene functions, and the effect of individual gene is easy to be overlooked without the clue of systematic trait analyses. Our aim is to establish detail collection of morphological traits with the help of bioinformatics and 3D scanning methods. About 50,000 mutants of Arabidopsis thaliana, a model organism for plant genetics, have been created. To analyze the gene functions a high-precision measuring technique is required. However, until now visual observation has been applied on about 20 qualitative indices with almost no numerical notation (e.g., seed size, leaf area, color of leaves or flowers). We constructed 3-dimentional laser scanner to fit the observation of morphology of Arabidopsis thaliana with numerical observation indices.