The small flowering plant, Arabidopsis thaliana, a member of the mustard family, has become a model system for plant biology. Its unique features allow it to be applied to a wide variety of research problems, including plant physiology, the molecular genetic study of organ development, and plant- pathogen interactions. Arabidopsis has established itself in this role for several reasons: its small size; short life cycle; small genome size; low amount of repetitive DNA sequences; and the relative ease with which it is manipulated by molecular and genetic methods. The importance of Arabidopsis to plant biology is increasing with the international development of germplasm and DNA stock resource centers, genetic and physical maps and their techniques, plus expression sequence tag (EST, single pass cDNA sequences) and genomic sequencing projects. Furthermore, because flowering plants evolved recently, characterizing a gene in Arabidopsis often simplifies the isolation of a corresponding gene in another flowering plant. This project will provide an electronic database containing the genomic information for Arabidopsis thaliana including convenient and correlated access to all published and otherwise publicly available information about genes, their products, their positions on the genetic and physical maps, and their DNA sequences. Furthermore, this resource will accommodate a diverse group of users, ranging from Arabidopsis molecular biologists to other biologists whose own research problems can take advantage of work conducted using Arabidopsis. This database project will provide an information resource on the Internet using the World Wide Web using client and server software developed specifically for genomic information presentation and analysis. The primary mission of this project is to develop a scientific database using object-relational database technologies as well as to develop an appropriate interface through the WWW to the information needed by the worldwide plant molecular biological community. The major product of this project will be the creation of a database environment which will validate and store information about physical and genetic maps, DNA sequences and their features, plus cross- references to the literature and detailed primary data. Collaborations with the Arabidopsis Genome Initiative (AGI), an international group of scientists working to determine the complete DNA sequence of the Arabidopsis genome by the year 2004 have been developed to provide the plant biology community with a easy access to the maps and sequence being created around the world.
