We have been employing both systems biology approaches and
classic molecular biology techniques, to identify and then characterize
useful candidate genes for improving plant stress tolerance. In a
recent report, we developed a systems biology-based screen for novel
Arabidopsis thaliana abiotic stress regulatory genes that combines
gene expression ranking and RNA co-expression analysis, followed
by rigorous screening of over 120 T-DNA insertion lines [14,15]. We
obtained a remarkable gene discovery rate of 62%, a 48-fold increase
over classic genetic screens, and better than any other currently reported
computational method. Our co-expression network of Arabidopsis
regulatory genes can be inspected at http://netbio.bgu.ac.il/arnet.