ABSTRACT
As noted elsewhere in this volume, legume crops are responsible for producing the majority of protein in the human diet, either directly through crops such as soybean, or indirectly via crops such as alfalfa, a staple feed for livestock. Therefore, legume crop improvement is of paramount importance to sustaining the world’s burgeoning human population in the years to come. Biotechnological approaches to this end will produce abundant genome sequence data as a foundation for forward genetics and a starting point for reverse genetics. Bioinformatics is a term that encompasses the efforts of biologists, computer scientists, and statisticians to organize and analyze genomic sequences and associated data. These efforts are vast in scope. Each crop has traits in terms of morphology, physiology, and genome organization that are unique, so research efforts and resources must be devoted to each crop to do it justice. However, progress toward this goal will wisely seek to leverage knowledge gained from and resources developed for certain species that may serve as a model for others. Thus, current bioinformatics efforts for legumes concentrate on sequencing, display, and ultimately accurate genomic and functional annotation of standard legume model genomes, including Medicago truncatula and Lotus japonicus. The purpose of this chapter is to state the prospects and limitations of utilizing existing genetic data, software tools, and genome databases to help annotate these model systems.
