"Genomics: Plant biology in 2010 (Policy forum)."

Science 290, 2077-2078.

CR Somerville and JL Dangl

Summary The imminent completion of the Arabidopsis genome sequence represents the culmination of a 10-year effort by the plant biology community. By the time the community was ready to undertake high-throughput sequencing in 1996, a broad international infrastructure and a history of international cooperation were in place to support a collegial and efficient sequencing project. As the project draws to a close, a new 10-year project of comparable import is about to begin. At the heart of the proposed program is the ambitious goal of knowing the function of all plant genes by the year 2010. More boldly, it is envisioned that this knowledge will facilitate the development of a virtual plant--a computer model that will use information about each gene product to simulate the growth and development of a plant under many environmental conditions. In response to a proposal from the community, The U.S. National Science Foundation has recently announced a new funding program that is expected to provide up to $25 million per year for the project. In conjunction with programs for funding Arabidopsis functional genomics in other countries, the NSF 2010 Project will certainly accelerate progress toward understanding basic plant biology within the next decade. However, we believe that the project will also change the way in which academicians study plant biology. Here, we have attempted to outline some of the issues that we believe will drive these changes, and to offer opinions on how to attain desirable outcomes.