A bioinformatics approach to investigate the function of non-specific lipid transfer proteins in Arabidopsis thaliana
Arabidopsis thaliana:
Arabidopsis thaliana is widely used as a model organism in plant biology. Arabidopsis is a member of the mustard (Brassicaceae) family ; it offers important advantages for basic research in genetics and molecular biology. There are useful statistics in Arabidopsis which act as a model system for Plant Molecular Geneticist. They are:
- It has one of the smallest genomes in the plant kingdom.
- Transgenic plants can be made easily using Agrobacterium tumefaciens.
- Rapid germination and it can require a relatively small space.
- It produces a large bulk of leaf growth.
- Plant transformation is easy.
Such advantages have made Arabidopsis a model organism for studies of the cellular and molecular biology of flowering plants.
Non-Specific Lipid Transfer Protein:
Plant non-specific lipid proteins were firstly identified from the spinach leaves and hence named for their property to mediate in vitro transfer of Phospholipids between membranes. NsLTPs are widely distributed in the plant kingdom, but an exact biological role in vitro is not clearly understood. The increase in the number of genome-wide data, which explain the functional properties of the genes, mediates the development of advance system biology.
Challenges:
- To analyze the expression profile of the Arabidopsis nsLTPs genes under different response.
- To obtain the Arabidopsis nsLTPs genes co-expression network
- To employ GO enrichment analysis to check the biological functional module in the lipid transport in the Arabidopsis.
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Director of undergraduate studies Biology
Last updated:
05/18/10