An Italian functional genomic resource for Medicago truncatula

Background: Medicago truncatula is a model species for legumes. Its functional genomics have
been considerably boosted in recent years due to initiatives based both in Europe and US.
Collections of mutants are becoming increasingly available and this will help unravel the genetic
control of important traits for many species of legumes.
Findings: Our report is on the production of three complementary mutant collections of the
model species Medicago truncatula produced in Italy in the frame of a national genomic initiative.
Well established strategies were used: Tnt1 mutagenesis, TILLING and activation tagging. Both
forward and reverse genetics screenings proved the efficiency of the mutagenesis approaches
adopted, enabling the isolation of interesting mutants which are in course of characterization. We
anticipate that the reported collections will be complementary to the recently established
functional genomics tools developed for Medicago truncatula both in Europe and in the United
States