The CATMA database is publicly and freely available. Access it here
The aim of the Complete Arabidopsis Transcriptome MicroArray (CATMA) project was the design and production of high quality Gene-specific Sequence Tags (GSTs) covering most Arabidopsis genes. The GST repertoire is used by numerous groups for the production of DNA arrays for transcript profiling experiments.
CATMA microarrays constitute the foundation of the
CAGE project
aiming at the construction of a gene expression reference database for
Arabidopsis. The CATMA GSTs are also the basic materials in the
AGRIKOLA project
focusing on the large-scale systematic RNAi silencing of
Arabidopsis genes.
CATMA is a consortium of research groups from eight European countries.
All CATMA members are public laboratories, some with ties to private
research institutions. In the years 2001 to 2003, they contributed to the
purchase of the reagents and to the work necessary for the production of
the version 1 (v1) and v2 GST repertoires.
A synchronization of the repertoire in 2005 with the at that time latest Arabidopsis genome annotations (TIGR5 and Eugène040917)lead -with financial support of the French, German, Swedish, Swiss, UK and Belgian members- to repertoire v3 containing 30,343 GSTs. A last design effort was undertaken in 2006 by the Swiss consortium member, in which an extra 543 GSTs could be designed by using less stringent design criteria, thus forming repertoire v4. Probes were now also allowed to simultaneously tag multiple members of gene families, leading to 990 GFTs (Gene Family Tags). The description of these GFTs can be found on the CATMA Gene Family Tag website.
