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''Medicago truncatula'' (barrel medic or barrel medick or barrel clover) is a small annual legume native to the Mediterranean region that is used in genomic research. It is a low-growing, clover-like plant 10–60 cm tall with trifoliate leaves. Each leaflet is rounded, 1–2 cm long, often with a dark spot in the center. The flowers are yellow, produced singly or in a small inflorescence of 2-5 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.〔Young et al (2011). The Medicago genome provides insight into the evolution of rhizobial symbioses, Nature. ()〕 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. ==Sequencing of the ''Medicago truncatula'' genome== 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 (NCGR) (US), John Innes Centre (UK), Institut National de Recherche Agronomique (France), Munich Information Center for Protein Sequences (MIPS) (Germany), Wageningen University (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. By 2009, 84% of the genome assembly had been completed.〔http://www.medicago.org/genome/genome_stats.php〕 The assembly of the genome sequence in ''Medicago truncatula'' was based on bacterial artificial chromosomes or BACs. This is the same approach that was used to sequence the genomes of humans, the fruitfly, ''Drosophila melanogaster'', and the model plant, ''Arabidopsis thaliana''. In July 2013 version 4.0 of the genome was released.〔http://www.jcvi.org/cgi-bin/medicago/overview.cgi〕 This version combined sequences gained from shotgun sequencing with the BAC-based sequence assemblies, which has helped to fill in the gaps in the previously mapped sequences. A parallel group known as the International ''Medicago'' Gene Annotation Group ((IMGAG )) is responsible for identifying and describing putative gene sequences within the genome sequence. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Medicago truncatula」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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