This award provides funds for the SPP (Stanford - University of Pennsylvania -Plant Gene Expression Laboratory/UC Berkeley) Consortium to continue sequencing the genome of the model plant, Arabidopsis thaliana. The SPP was established for the purpose of sequencing the genome of Arabidopsis thaliana and the effort was initiated in 1996 as part of the multinational project involving 6 groups in 4 nations.
In this renewal award, the SPP Consortium plans to complete the sequence of chromosome 1 of Arabidopsis thaliana during the next three-year period. The size of the chromosome is estimated to be approximately 25 Mb (megabases). The estimated cost of sequencing is between $0.40 and $0.50 per base pair. The accuracy of the sequencing process is continually monitored and, the SPP has exceeded the accepted rate of less than 1 inaccurate base in 10,000 bases. The immediate data release policy of the SPP Consortium mandates that all contiguous sequences (contigs) greater than 2 kb be released to the public database with information on the degree of finishing. This allows research scientists in all fields to access the sequence data at the earliest possible time but with some notation as to the level of completion. Annotation (pertinent biological information) is added to the GenBank entries as soon as possible after release. Each SPP site has constructed and maintains its own web page with current progress and details about the specific duties and progress at each location. In addition, the SPP Consortium has recently built a new web page summarizing in one location the overall progress (http://www-sequence.stanford.edu/ara/SPP.html). The individual web sites can also be accessed from that address.
The SPP efforts, combined with the coordinated efforts by the other sequencing groups, will contributed to the goal of completing the sequencing of the Arabidopsis genome by the end of the year 2000. Partial Arabidopsis genome sequence information obtained thus far has already contributed new insights into the biology of flowering plants. As Arabidopsis is a typical flowering plant, what is learned from Arabidopsis is readily transferable to all plants. It is expected that the complete genome sequence information will revolutionize the field of plant biology.
