ABSTRACT
One ultimate goal of many plant scientists is to gain in depth knowledge of the function of each gene in a given plant. Understanding how genes coordinate growth and development of a living being is of great importance in many areas of science and technology. In the last decade, sequencing projects turned out myriads of genes. Because traditional approaches involve studying genes one at a time, and given that there are at least 20,000 genes in any given plant species, understanding the functions of all these genes requires new strategies. In the last few years, several technological advances for deciphering and manipulating the genetic information revolutionized the field of genetics, giving birth to a new area in biological sciences: genomics. Genomics provides the strategies for the simultaneous study of hundreds or thousands of genes. Using microarrays, for instance, the expression of many genes can be studied in parallel. Furthermore, it is hoped that genomics can be complemented with proteomics to also assess the function of each gene’s product.
