The first is to complete the sequencing of Arabidopsis and rice. The third goal is to identify the functions of the gene sequences, including expression patterns for pathways or networks of genes under specific environmental conditions. These problems include identification of genes involved in drought and salt stress tolerance among plants, identification and characterization of the network of genes involved in cotton fiber development and in regulating the quality of oil and starch in corn and other seeds, finding the genes involved in wood formation for trees, learning the genomic basis of plant-microbe interactions in biological nitrogen fixation, and finding the genomic basis for various developmental processes that produce fruits, tubers, roots, and flowers. Gribskov also noted that sequencing efforts have begun for plants that are off the beaten track of human utility, including primitive plants like ferns and liverworts. These, too, will yield genetic information of great interest by helping to distinguish those genes common to all land plants from those present only in angiosperms.
Petunia hybrida cv.
Skerry blue Watercolor paintings by Doreen Hamilton, as part of a series on the Solanaceae that she is preparing for exhibition at the Royal Horticultural Society of London. The fourth and fifth goals of the national initiative are to develop technologies and methods specifically designed to advance plant genomics and to share and use the extensive data resources that are being generated. In some cases, for example, database schemas are home-grown reinventions of the wheel, incompatible with all other schemas. The Net Center for Plant Genomics will try to be a clearinghouse for informatics tools that can be readily re-used and that can make data accessible across projects. Another clearinghouse function for the site relates to standards.