Abnormal developments

Abstract

Modern genetic saturation analysis of embryonic pattern has arrived in the Plant Kingdom, as announced on page 402 of this issue and in a complimentary paper in Development. From analysis of 44,000 mutagenized lines of the laboratory weed Arabidopsis thaliana (the common wall cress), Jürgens and co-workers have extracted 250 strains in which the pattern of development that leads from zygote to seedling has been disrupted, in specific and repeatable ways. They estimate the number of zygotically active genes represented by this collection to be around 40, and that mutagenesis for such genes is near statistical saturation.

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