Sir

Although only recently published in Nature1, the entire sequence of the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana has been in the public domain for a considerable length of time. We note, however, that the papers analysing the data of the human genome substantially lack comparisons to the Arabidopsis genome.

Unlike any of the animal genomes sequenced to date, the Arabidopsis genome is virtually without significant gaps, and even includes a substantial amount of heterochromatic sequence which has been of great use in examining centromere structure and function2.

To cite but a single comparison arising from our own work, we have identified the entire complement of SNAREs in Arabidopsis3. Most notably, this mere slip of a plant encodes for more SNAREs (53, ref. 3) than humans do (35, ref. 4), including some classes of SNAREs which are not found in either human or yeast cells3.

We can understand that there is limited space for such analyses, but surely one should not omit significant information pertaining to an entire kingdom of eukaryotes!

If a comparison with yeast genes is of relevance to the evolution and function of the human orthologues, would not a comparison with a more distantly related and multicellular eukaryote reveal even more?