AtGenExpress, the first large-scale transcriptome data set in arabidopsis: Project summary and its practical applications

An international research effort, the AtGenExpress consortium was organized to make an important contribution to science community by collecting large-scale transcriptome data sets. The consortium detailed the developmental process (Schmid et al., 2005), stress responses (Kilian et al., 2007), hormone responses (Goda et al., 2008) and etc. in Arabidopsis. In this manuscript, we will summarize activities in AtGenExpress project. The data have been distributed from primary databases, such as, TAIR, GEO or NASCArrays. The data have been utilized actively to develop secondary web-based databases, data browsers (digital northern analysis tools), coexpression databases, or sample-wise correlation analysis tools. These web-tools are further facilitating plant science. We will also introduce data utilization in current plant biology especially in the area of plant hormone research.