Abiotic stress and plant genome evolution. Search for new models.

The remarkable ability of plants to adapt to many different adverse environments is a fascinating process. Research into the physiology and metabolism of so-called extremophiles not only fosters better understanding of the evolutionary processes that have created the diversity of life as it exists on earth, but also has economic implications for agricultural biotechnology and the development of novel products. The capacity to sequence genomes and the availability of novel molecular tools have now catapulted biological research into eras of genomics and post-genomics, creating an opportunity to apply genomic techniques to extremophile models. This has led plant scientists to search for such models among the relatives of Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana), the most universally used species in molecular plant research owing to its many technical advantages and the wealth of available biological information. A workshop held in Paris in September 2004 united scientists from the United States, Canada, Japan, Israel, and Europe under the header Integrating International Research on Plant Abiotic Stress Tolerance Using Arabidopsis Relative Model Systems (ARMS): Thellungiella halophila. The aim of this Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC)-funded meeting, coorganized by Anna Amtmann (University of Glasgow, UK) and Arnould Savouré (University of Paris VI, France), was to explore the use of Thellungiella as a model extremophile and to develop strategies for its development by the international community.