Arabidopsis 2010 Project: Development of Arabidopsis Proteome Chip

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The complete genome sequence of Arabidopsis has revealed a large number of novel genes, however DNA sequence alone offers few clues as to their specific functions. Currently, much effort is being devoted toward studying gene function and expression. Although important, these studies are not sufficient to predict the structure, function, and activity of proteins in the cell. Proteomics, the global analysis of proteins, is emerging as an important area of research. In this pilot project, a small collection of expression clones of Arabidopsis open reading frames will be generated. Using this collection, optimal protein expression systems will be developed to produce and purify Arabidopsis proteins. The proteins will be printed to generate pilot protein chips, which will then be screened for various biochemical assays, including protein-protein interaction assays, protein-DNA/RNA interactions, protein-phospholipids interactions and the identification of substrates for kinases and other enzymes.Broader Impacts: The rapid progress in the field of large-scale biology has provided the opportunity to understand the function of biological networks as a whole. Since the biochemical function of a gene is manifested through its encoded protein, recently much emphasis has been devoted to the development of new tools for proteomics. Therefore, this project will ultimately provide an enormous valuable resource to the scientific community for a variety of applications aimed at the high-throughput study of protein function in Arabidopsis. The advantage of proteome chips is that a comprehensive set of individual proteins can be directly screened in vitro for a wide variety of activities. Furthermore, once the proteins are prepared, proteome screening is significantly faster and cheaper than other methods. The reagents and information generated from this project will be available to the scientific community (http://bioinfo.mbb.yale.edu/genome/plant) on a regular basis and are expected to significantly enhance the analysis of protein function in Arabidopsis.