Bienvenidos a TAIR! Kate Dreher curator TAIR/PMN

TAIR = The Arabidopsis Information Resource Why Arabidopsis? What does TAIR do? What can you do with TAIR? Introduction to TAIR Arabidopsis

Introduction to Arabidopsis Basic facts: small weed related to mustard also known as mouse ear cress can grow to cm tall annual (or occasionally biennial) plant member of the Brassicaceae broccoli cauliflower radish cabbage found around the northern hemisphere Why do so many people study THIS plant?

Arabidopsis has good model organism traits Fast life cycle (6 weeks) Thousands of plants fit in a small space Fairly easy to grow Thousands of seeds produced by each plant Self-fertile (in-breeding) Many different subspecies/ecotypes Serves as a good model for crop plants But why Arabidopsis instead of other plants?

Arabidopsis offers some advantages Good genome very small: 125 Mb diploid 5 haploid chromosomes fewer/smaller regions of repetitive DNA than many plants Quite easily transformable with Agrobacterium NO tissue culture required Inertia! A group of scientists lobbied for Arabidopsis The genome was sequenced (2000) MANY resources have been developed

Arabidopsis research can be successfully applied to real plants Over-expression of the hardy gene from Arabidopsis can improve water use efficiency in rice (Karaba 2007) cDNAs from castor bean were over-expressed in Arabidopsis and a high- throughput screen of fatty acid content in Arabidopsis seeds led to the identification of three cDNAs that increase the hydroxy fatty acid levels (Lu 2006) Endosperm-specific over-expression of the Arabidopsis GTPCHI and ADCS biosynthetic genes can increase folate (vitamin B9) levels by up to 100-fold in rice (Storozhenko 2007) Studies on a sodium transporter (HKT1) in Arabidopsis helped to identify a durum wheat homolog. It has been introgressed into bread wheat lines and appears to improve their yield on saline soils (Hwang 2006; Byrt 2007, et al) Both basic and translational experiments using Arabidopsis continue...

Arabidopsis data explosion TONS of data are generated about Arabidopsis Over 2400 Arabidopsis articles published each year are indexed in PubMed Tens of thousands of mutants have been generated Hundreds of microarray experiments have been performed Proteomics and metabolomics studies are becoming popular 1001 Arabidopsis genomes are being sequenced Large-scale phenotypic studies are scheduled to start soon TAIR tries to bring data together to benefit scientists and society That includes all of you...

What does TAIR do? Curators and computer tech team members work together under great directors TAIR develops internal data sets and resources TAIR links to external data sets and resources TAIR provides free on-line access to everyone: Funded by the National Science Foundation of the USA Started in 1999 Dr. Eva Huala Director Dr. Sue Rhee Co-PI Curators Computer tech team members

Internal TAIR data sets Structural curators try to correctly define gene sequences Functional curators try to correctly describe gene function

Structural curation at TAIR Structural curators try to answer the question: What are ALL of the genes in Arabidopsis? Use many types of data ESTs full-length cDNAs peptides orthology Determine gene coordinates and features Establish intron, exon, and UTR boundaries Add alternative splice variants Classify genes protein coding miRNA psuedogene Keep updating! (even though the genome was sequenced in 2000!) TAIR9 – released June new loci and 739 new gene models

Structural curation at TAIR Apollo is a program to assist with structural curation ESTs Protein similarity cDNAs

The seed-bearing structure in angiosperms, formed from the ovary after flowering Functional curation at TAIR Functional curators try to answer the questions: What does every gene/protein in Arabidopsis do? When are where does it act? Functional curation requires controlled vocabularies Allow cross-species comparisons TAIR curators work to develop and agree upon common terms achene berry capsule caryopsis circumcissile capsule cypsela drupe follicle grain kernel legume loculicidal capsule lomentum nut pod pome poricidal capsule schizocarp septicidal capsule septifragal capsule silique FRUIT Plant Ontology: Structure: PO:

Catalysis of the reaction: auxin + UDP-D-glucose = indole-3-acetyl-beta-1-D-glucose + UDP Functional curation at TAIR Functional curators try to correctly describe gene function Functional curators try to help build controlled vocabularies Allow cross-species comparisons Develop and agree upon common terms indole-3-acetate beta-glucosyltransferase activity Gene Ontology: Molecular function: GO: IAA-Glu synthetase activity IAA-glucose synthase activity IAGlu synthase activity indol-3-ylacetylglucose synthase activity UDP-glucose:(indol-3-yl)acetate beta-D-glucosyltransferase activity UDP-glucose:indol-3-ylacetate glucosyl-transferase activity UDP-glucose:indol-3-ylacetate glucosyltransferase activity UDPG-indol-3-ylacetyl glucosyl transferase activity UDPglucose:indole-3-acetate beta-D-glucosyltransferase activity uridine diphosphoglucose-indoleacetate glucosyltransferase activity

Functional curation at TAIR Functional curators use controlled vocabularies to annotate genes Molecular function Subcellular localization Biological process Expression pattern Development stage Tissue / organ / cell type Gene Enter common name, e.g. Nitrate Transporter 2.7, NRT2.7 Prefer to track using AGI (Arabidopsis Genome Initiative) Locus Codes AT5G14570 Data Sources Published Literature Researchers Arabidopsis thaliana Chromosome 5 Position along chromosome (between and 14580) Gene

Functional curation at TAIR Functional curators capture mutant phenotypes alx8 mutant – mutation in gene At5g63980

External data sets MANY different external data sets are linked to specific genes EST sequences (Arabidopsis and other species) Transcript expression data Peptide expression data Biochemical pathway data (... described in the PMN talk) Epigenetic features Ecotype-specific polymorphisms Publications Seed stocks DNA vectors Interaction partners Promoter elements Post-translational modifications Orthologs New data types are frequently added

Providing Tools at TAIR Tech (computer) team members and curators Provide links to external databases from every gene page

Providing Tools at TAIR Tech (computer) team members and curators Load TAIR and external data sets into existing tools BLAST GBrowse Synteny Viewer (very new) NBrowse Interaction Viewer (coming soon...) Genbank Green Plant

Providing Tools at TAIR Tech (computer) team members and curators Develop new tools and modify existing tools SeqViewer Patmatch... several others

Providing Tools at TAIR Tech (computer) team members and curators Create advanced search pages

Other Resources at TAIR Ordering system for the Arabidopsis Biological Resource Center (ABRC) DNA stocks Seed stocks Community member information Arabidopsis lab protocols Gene Symbol Registry Information Portals

Are these data and tools useful? TAIR ITAIR IITAIR ITAIR II TAIR ITAIR II Visits per Month Unique Visitors per Month Bytes per Month

Who uses TAIR? (June 4 – July 4, 2009)

Why might you use TAIR? Do you work with plants? Do you want to take advantage of the tremendous amount of Arabidopsis data? Do you want to know more about a gene? an enzyme? a protein domain? a DNA regulatory region? an abnormal phenotype? a chromosomal region? a set of orthologous proteins? a biological process? natural variation across populations? Then please come see if TAIR can help you

Putting TAIR to work for you... You are studying drought tolerance in potato plants You do a subtractive hybridization study to identify cDNAs that are up- regulated in the roots of drought-stressed plants You find that a number of the up-regulated cDNAs code for proteins with a new domain: Ser-x-Glu-x-Cys-x-Ala = (SxExCxA) One of the family members, SECA1, appears to be present at particularly high levels How can TAIR help?

Putting TAIR to work for you... Are there any proteins with the SxExCxA domain in Arabidopsis? What do they do in Arabidopsis? Do they share additional domains? What is the closest homolog to SECA1? Are there any phenotypes when SECA1 is mutated? Can I get a cDNA of this homolog to over-express in my species? Are there putative SECA1 orthologs in other plant species?

Are there any SxExCxA proteins in Arabidopsis? Find all of the proteins that have the SxExCxA domain

What do the SxExCxA proteins do? Option 1: Get the individual GO annotations for each gene

What do SxExCxA proteins do? Option 2: Get an overview of the information for the set of genes

GO categorization

What do SxExCxA proteins do? Option 3: Get the description of each gene

What other domains do SxExCxA proteins share? Identify all of the other domains found in those proteins

What is the closest homolog to SECA1? Blast SECA1 against the TAIR9 protein data set

Are there any mutant phenotypes associated with At2g04240? Use the Seed/Germplasm Search page... or look in the Germplasm section of the Locus page

Can I get a cDNA for At2g04240 to overexpress in potato? Use the DNA Clones Search page

Are there putative SECA1 orthologs in other plant species? Look for putative orthologs and paralogs using GBrowse Phytozome (orthologs) InParanoid (paralogs)

We are here to help: Please use our data Please use our tools Please use TAIR to help improve your research on IMPORTANT plants! Please contact us if we can be of any help! Make an appointment to meet with me during my visit (Puedo tratar de hablar en español)

Acknowledgements TAIR Current Curators: - Tanya Berardini (lead curator – functional annotation) - David Swarbreck (lead curator – structural annotation) - Peifen Zhang (Director and lead curator- metabolism) - A. S. Karthikeyan (curator) - Philippe Lamesch (curator) - Donghui Li (curator) - Rajkumar Sasidharan (curator) Recent Past Contributors: - Debbie Alexander (curator) Eva Huala (Director) Sue Rhee (Co-PI) Tech Team Members: - Bob Muller (Manager) - Larry Ploetz (Sys. Administrator) - Raymond Chetty - Anjo Chi - Vanessa Kirkup - Cynthia Lee - Tom Meyer - Shanker Singh - Chris Wilks

We are here to help: Please use our data Please use our tools Please use TAIR to help improve your research on IMPORTANT plants! Please contact us if we can be of any help! Make an appointment to meet with me during my visit (Puedo tratar de hablar en español)

Why Arabidopsis? Plant research can benefit from focusing on a model plant Other model organisms include: Model organisms are easy to do experiments on Fast life cycle Dont need much space Easy to take care of Lots of offspring (for genetics) Can be genetically transformed Good model for the really interesting species humans CROP PLANTS Communities develop to study model organisms Many resources become available for model organisms Lab protocols Mutant maps Stock centers Genome sequences... and more! roundworm yeast mouse fruit fly zebrafish What should be the model plant?

Have I been able to get useful information at TAIR? We hope so! But, if you have any trouble finding the information you want...