CAFRI-Arabidopsis: An Intuitive Web-Based Functional Redundancy Inspector in Arabidopsis

Abstract

Plants, being sessile organisms, are exposed to a diverse range of environmental challenge. Over time, they have evolved various mechanisms to withstand these harsh conditions, often acquiring functional redundancy in genes with similar sequence. This genetic redundancy, while advantageous for the plant's adaptability, poses challenges in functional genomics research. To address this issue, we developed CAFRI-Arabidopsis (https://cafri.khu.ac.kr/arabidopsis/), a web resource designed to intuitively explore functional redundancy in Arabidopsis, a model plant that has significantly contributed to understanding the morphological and physiological traits. Our tool combines transcriptome data with Pfam-based phylogenetic data across 33 tissues/organs to visualize and quantify functional redundancy. Its effectiveness has been validated through a comprehensive literature review. User-friendly in design, CAFRI-Arabidopsis allows users to quickly generate results by inputting the desired locus. We anticipate that this tool will be invaluable in uncovering new insights in plant developmental and physiological studies that have been previously obscured due to functional redundancy.