The Medicago truncatula Genome: Genomic Data Availability.

ABSTRACT

Medicago truncatula emerged in 1990 as a model for legumes, comprising the third largest land plant family. Most legumes form symbiotic nitrogen-fixing root nodules with compatible soil bacteria and thus are important contributors to the global nitrogen cycle and sustainable agriculture. Legumes and legume products are important sources for human and animal protein as well as for edible and industrial oils. In the years since M. truncatula was chosen as a legume model, many genetic, genomic, and molecular resources have become available, including reference quality genome sequences for two widely used genotypes. Accessibility of genomic data is important for many different types of studies with M. truncatula as well as for research involving crop and forage legumes. In this chapter, we discuss strategies to obtain archived M. truncatula genomic data originally deposited into custom databases that are no longer maintained but are now accessible in general databases. We also review key current genomic databases that are specific to M. truncatula as well as those that contain M. truncatula data in addition to data from other plants.