• Interdisciplinary Bio Central
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• v.3 no.1
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• pp.2.1-2.4
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• 2011

Arabidopsis is well-known to the world's plant research community as a model plant. Many significant resources and innovative research tools, as well as large bodies of genomic information, have been created and shared by the research community, partly explaining why so many researchers use this small plant for their research. The genome sequence of Arabidopsis was fully characterized by the end of the $20^{th}$ century. Soon afterwards, the Arabidopsis research community began a 10-year international project on the functional genomics of the species. In 2001, at the beginning of the project, the RIKEN BioResource Center (BRC) started its Arabidopsis resource project. The following year, the National BioResource Project was launched, funded by the Japanese government, and the RIKEN BRC was chosen as a core facility for Arabidopsis resource. Seeds of RIKEN Arabidopsis transposon-tagged mutant lines, activation-tagged lines, full-length cDNA over-expresser lines, and natural accessions, as well as RIKEN Arabidopsis full-length cDNA clones and T87 cells, are preserved at RIKEN BRC and distributed around the world. The major resources provided to the research community have been full-length cDNA clones and insertion mutants that are suitable for use in reverse-genetics studies. This paper provides an overview of the Arabidopsis resources made available by RIKEN BRC and examples of research that has been done by users and developers of these resources.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Plant Biotechnology Conference
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• 2005.11a
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• pp.95-105
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• 2005

Transposon-mediated insertional mutagenesis provides one of the most powerful tools for functional studies of genes in higher plants. This project has been performed to develop a large population of insertional mutations, and to construct databases of molecular information on Ds insertion sites in rice. Ultimate goals are to supply genetic materials and information to analyze gene function and to identify and utilize agronomically important genes for breeding purpose. Two strategies have been employed to generate the large scale of transposon population in a Japonica type rice, Dongjin Byeo; 1) genetic crosses between Ac and Ds lines and 2) plant regeneration from seeds carrying Ac and Ds. Our study showed that over 70% of regenerated plants generally carried independent Ds elements and high activity of transposition was detected only during regeneration period. Ds-flanking DNA amplified from leaf tissues of F2 and T1 (or T2) plants have been amplified via TAIL-PCR and directly sequenced. So far, over 65,000 Ds lines have been generated and over 9,500 Ds loci have been mapped on chromosomes by sequence analysis. Database of molecular information on Ds insertion sites has been constructed, and has been opened to the public and will be updated soon at http://www.niab.go.kr. Detailed functional analysis of more than 30 rice mutants has been performed. Several Ds-tagged rice genes that have been selected for functional analysis will be briefly introduced. We expect that a great deal of information and genetic resources of Ds lines would be obtained during the course of this project, which will be shared with domestic and international rice researchers. In addition to the Japonica rice, we have established the tagging system in an rice line of indica genetic background, MGRI079. MGRI079 (Indica/Japonica) was transformed with Agrobacteria carrying Ac and Ds T-DNA vectors. Among transgenic lines, we successfully identified single-copy Ds and Ac lines in MGR1079. These lines were served as ‘starter lines’ to mutagenize Indica genetic background. To achieve rapid, large scale generation of Ds transposant lines, MGR1079 transformants carrying homozygous Ac were crossed with ones with homozygous Ds, and $F_2$seeds were used for plant regeneration. In this year, over 2,000 regeneration plants were grown in the field. We are able to evaluate the tagging efficiency in the Indica genetic background in the fall.