Bioinformatics Tools for Plant Genomics

Bioinformatics Tools for Plant Genomics

The articles in this special issue reflect a convergence of developments in the fields of bioinformatics and plant genomics. Bioinformatics has its roots vaguely seated in the early 1980s, a time when personal computers began appearing in research laboratories and researchers began recognizing that those computers could be used as tools to organize, analyze and visualize their data. In the ensu...

Genomics, bioinformatics, and plant systematics

Genomics and bioinformatics are emerging disciplines that have the potential to fundamentally alter current approaches to molecular systematics. The sequencing of eukaryotic genomes has demonstrated the ability to obtain and interpret nucleotide sequences at a scale and efficiency that was unimaginable just a few years ago. The immense amount of sequence information generated by genome projects...

Plant MITEs: Useful Tools for Plant Genetics and Genomics

MITEs (Miniature inverted-repeat transposable elements) are reminiscence of non-autonomous DNA (class II) elements, which are distinguished from other transposable elements by their small size, short terminal inverted repeats (TIRs), high copy numbers, genic preference, and DNA sequence identity among family members. Although MITEs were first discovered in plants and still actively reshaping ge...

Gene traps: tools for plant development and genomics.

Classical genetic approaches to gene identification rely on disruption of a gene leading to a recognizable phenotype. This approach continues to be an extremely successful one, yielding mutations that result in overt phenotypes reflecting the function of the corresponding gene. Not all genes, however, can be uncovered by mutagenesis for two main reasons. First, many genes are functionally redun...

Bioinformatics Genomics and post - genomics