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Concept
Medicago truncatula
Summary
Medicago truncatula, the barrelclover, strong-spined medick, barrel medic, or barrel medick, is a small annual legume native to the Mediterranean region that is used in genomic research. It is a low-growing, clover-like plant tall with trifoliate leaves. Each leaflet is rounded, long, often with a dark spot in the center. The flowers are yellow, produced singly or in a small inflorescence of two to five together; the fruit is a small, spiny pod.
This species is studied as a model organism for legume biology because it has a small diploid genome, is self-fertile, has a rapid generation time and prolific seed production, is amenable to genetic transformation, and its genome has been sequenced.
It forms symbioses with nitrogen-fixing rhizobia (Sinorhizobium meliloti and Sinorhizobium medicae) and arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi including Rhizophagus irregularis (previously known as Glomus intraradices). The model plant Arabidopsis thaliana does not form either symbiosis, making M. truncatula an important tool for studying these processes.
It is also an important forage crop species in Australia.
The draft sequence of the genome of M. truncatula cultivar A17 was published in the journal Nature in 2011.
The sequencing was carried out by an international partnership of research laboratories involving researchers from the University of Oklahoma (US), J. Craig Venter Institute (US), Genoscope (France), and Sanger Centre (UK). Partner institutions included the University of Minnesota (US), University of California-Davis (US), the National Center for Genomic Resources (US), John Innes Centre (UK), Institut National de Recherche Agronomique (France), Munich Information Center for Protein Sequences (Germany), Wageningen University (the Netherlands), and Ghent University (Belgium). The Medicago truncatula Sequencing Consortium began in 2001 with a seed grant from the Samuel Roberts Noble Foundation. In 2003, the National Science Foundation and the European Union 6th Framework Programme began providing most of the funding.
Official source
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