The 1001 Genomes Project for Arabidopsis thaliana

Abstract Mouse ear cress, Arabidopsis thaliana, is the workhorse of plant genetics, and currently only second to humans when it comes to information about genomic variation within the species. In the past two years, there has been a revolution in sequencing technology, and A. thaliana is an ideal object for exploiting the dramatic improvements in sequencing speed and cost. This report describes the beginning of the 1001 Genomes Project, which has as its goal the complete description of the genomes of 1001 wild strains of A. thaliana.