Phenotyping of Arabidopsis mutants for developmental effects of gene deletions

With the completion of the Arabidopsis thaliana genome sequencing project the next major challenge is the assignment of biological functions to the more than 25,000 genes. Reverse genetics is a powerful tool to elucidate gene function in Arabidopsis. Increasingly sophisticated genetic approaches are being developed for reverse genetics with the long-term goal of understanding how the coordinated activity of all proteins rises to a complex organism. Identification of a biological function for each gene is often doomed to fail as many loss- or gain-of-function lines exhibit no obvious phenotypes under normal propagation conditions . Here we provide an overview on how to phenotype plants during their development. This phenotypic streamlined analysis is based on a series of defined growth stages (germination, seedling, vegetative, and reproductive stages), which can be used for the profiling of mutants.