FROM THE EDITOR

Genomics

Progress in science depends on both new ideas and new methodologies. Throughout the years, the pages of THE PLANT CELL and our sister journal Plant Physiology have contained ample evidence that major technological advances enable us to deepen our understanding of how plants develop and function. The advent of molecular tools and their combination with more classical genetic and biochemical approaches have allowed us to gain new insights into many previously intractable questions that had preoccupied plant biologists for years. Processes such as flowering, seed and embryo development, plant–microbe interactions, protein trafficking, inter- and intracellular signaling, ion uptake and transport, photosynthate partitioning, and adaptation to environmental stress are all yielding their secrets. As a result of these discoveries, we now think about plant development (i.e., combinatorial control by transcription factors), a plant's interaction with its environment (i.e., signal transduction cascades), and crop improvement (i.e., transgenic plants) in completely new ways. These novel ideas have greatly enriched the plant sciences.

With the recent emergence of genomics as a major new discipline within biology, we are on the verge of another technological revolution that will create its own original paradigms and further change the way we approach questions about how plants develop and function. The rapidly evolving tools of genomics include information about the genome itself (i.e., gene sequences, their relation to genetic maps, and comparisons to related plant groups); microarrays of DNAs that have been obtained from large collections of mutant plants (generated by chemical, physical, or insertional mutagenesis) and/or from plants that have been subjected to various treatments; and chips on which DNA fragments or oligonucleotides representing thousands of genes—even whole genomes—have been immobilized. Relational databases that can store the enormous amounts of information about gene products and their expression profiles that can be generated with these tools, as well as profiles of protein modifications and small metabolites, are becoming readily available. All of these efforts are being supported by powerful software that will allow us to obtain a comprehensive view—from gene to developmental decision or metabolic pathway—of the metabolic and genetic repertoire that is being played out in any cell, tissue, or organ at any point in the life cycle of any plant under any condition.

Genome-wide comprehensive approaches such as these, in which information concerning 20,000 genes and/or their products can be analyzed simultaneously, are likely to offer us insights into plant form and function that we can only begin to imagine. New targets for exploitation in the commercial markets are also likely to be identified using these approaches.

But how will all this information be distilled and presented to the entire plant science community? Clearly, both THE PLANT CELL and Plant Physiology are well positioned to play major roles in this genomics revolution. Indeed, papers that include genomic approaches can be submitted to either journal. As always, the decision to publish these papers in THE PLANT CELL will be based primarily on whether the data and the conclusions drawn from them directly address a biological problem, providing novel and significant findings that will extend our understanding of how plants grow, develop, and/or respond to external signals. Meyers et al. provide one example of such a paper on pages 1817–1832 of this issue. Here, the authors offer a detailed sequence and genetic analysis of a major disease resistance locus in lettuce that suggests a mechanism by which new resistance specificities may arise.

THE PLANT CELL is taking several steps to ensure that we will be ready to set the standard for genomics papers in plant biology. With the recent addition of Michel Caboche and Jonathan Jones to THE PLANT CELL editorial board, the scope of genomics expertise offered by our coeditors has been significantly expanded so that we may properly evaluate submissions that make use of genomic tools. In addition to encouraging submission of research papers in this area, THE PLANT CELL will dedicate a forthcoming special issue to coverage of plant genomics. The main aim of this series of review articles is to acquaint the plant science community with the tools of genomics, providing researchers with the background information they need to utilize and understand the approaches and technologies that are being developed. By staggering publication of these review articles over the course of a year, we also hope to provide the latest information on a broad spectrum of genomic tools that are already or soon will be available. In the meantime, an Update on genomics by D. Bouchez and H. Höfte appears in the November issue of Plant Physiology (Vol. 118, No. 3, pp. 725–732; http://www.plantphysiol.org) as does a version of this editorial (Vol 118, No. 3, p. 713).

The genomics era promises to be one in which innovative findings will emerge rapidly in many areas of biology. All of us associated with THE PLANT CELL look forward with anticipation to our part in reporting the ever increasing role that genomics will play in helping us understand how plants function.

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