EMBARGOED until 11 a.m. PST Wednesday, Dec. 13. The first complete genome sequence for a flowering plant, Arabidopsis thaliana, will be published on Dec. 14 in the journal Nature. University of California, Davis, plant biologist Anne Britt contributed to the report by an international team of scientists. Arabidopsis is a small, fast-growing plant widely used as the "lab mouse" of plant biology. The completed genome sequence may open up ways to study human diseases using plants. The researchers found unexpected similarities to, and differences from, other organisms that have been sequenced, such as the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae, the fruitfly Drosophila, and the soil roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans. Teams of scientists examined the DNA sequence for genes with particular functions. Britt, in collaboration with Jonathan Eisen of The Institute for Genome Research, looked for genes that repair damaged DNA. Twenty-seven genes were identified in Arabidopsis that were closely related to human disease genes, said Britt. Of these, a third were DNA repair genes, including genes linked to some types of breast and colon cancer, and to the hereditary disease xeroderma pigmentosa, which makes children extremely susceptible to skin cancer. "Arabidopsis has a similar distribution of repair genes to humans. Arabidopsis might turn out to be a very good model for the study of DNA repair in mammals," said Britt. UC Davis has established a national presence in the study of DNA repair and chromosome biology, according to Stephen Kowalczykowski, director of the Center for Genetics and Development.