Editorial [Hot topic: Plant Genomics in the 21st Century (Guest Editor: Chhandak Basu)]

摘要

It is my great pleasure as a Guest Editor of the journal Current Genomics to present you with a ‘hot topic issue’ on plant genomics. The complete sequence of genome of model plant Arabidopsis thaliana was a boost for plant genomics research. Following the path of Arabidopsis sequencing, hundreds of plant genomes are being sequenced and we have ocean of sequence data. It is a challenge for us to interpret the functions of thousands of genes. Surely, computational biology will be a great help in predicting functions of plant genes. Publicly available web based sequence annotation softwares are another resource to annotate and characterize plant genes. It is a challenge and responsibility for plant biologists to provide food, fiber and fuel for this exponentially increasing population. Sequences of model plants and crop plants will help us to understand the genome architectures of the plants and will help us to identify economically important genes. It is a well-established fact that a great alternative for whole genome sequencing is development of an EST (Expressed Sequence Tags) database. The ESTs will give us a snapshot of whole genome with a small percentage of cost of whole genome sequencing. The next generation sequencing including 454 sequencing (Roche Applied Sciences), Solexa system (Illumina) and SOliD system (Applied Biosystems) are also great resources for plant genomicists. These technologies will generate enormous amount of sequencing data, which will be beneficial to understand the basic physiology of plants.