Plant Tissue Cult. 12(1) : 79-91, 2002 (June)

Review paper

Current Genomics Research: The Prospect of Unraveling Gene Function and Its utilization in Crop Improvement

Greg Clark and Ahmad S. Islam

Department of Molecular, Cell and Development Biology, The University of Texas at Austin, USA

Key words:

Abastract

Research in the field of molecular biology is now carried out in a multidisci-plinary environment. The environment is so diverse that more often than not, researchers in one field lose track of what is happening in a related area and yet the integration of research results is sometimes crucial to understand the complexity of some of the life processes involved. A researcher working on phytohormones may not be well conversant with structural and functional genomics and yet such knowledge is a great help for him to identify the candidate genes, clone them and study their characteristics. Furthermore, the pace of research within the past five years, particularly since the completion of sequencing of the human genome, has been phenomenal. The speed was further accelerated when sequencing of the genome of the model plant Arabidopsis was accomplished. Journals like Plant Physiology and Plant Cell now publish two - three times more materials compared to their previous record in the 1990s.

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