Plant, Animal & Microbe Genomes X Conference

January 12-16, 2002
Town & Country Convention Center
San Diego, CA

Poster: Genome Sequencing & ESTs
            

COMPARATIVE GENOMICS OF ZEA AND ARABIDOPSIS FROM A COLLECTION OF FULL LENGTH CDNAS

¹ Ceres, Inc., 3007 Malibu Canyon, Malibu, CA, 90265, USA

A full-length (FL) cDNA library construction and sequencing strategy was used to characterize genes and to build an integrated functional genomics platform for Arabidopsis, Zea and other plant species. An analysis of the population of FL cDNAs revealed the nature of the UTRs, codon usage and encoded protein products for these species. In Arabidopsis, the number of “full-length” cDNAs was increased by using nucleic acid statistics, from the population of sequenced FL cDNAs, in the design of algorithms to predict genes in genomic DNA, for which FL cDNAs were not sequenced. In addition, FL corn cDNAs were used to identify the coding regions of Arabidopsis genes. The Arabidopsis cDNAs are being used in expression analyses, reverse genetics and ectopic expression to build a functional picture for every gene in the plant genome. Comparative genomic analyses across species were used to assign function to the corresponding full-length cDNAs in Zea. Our efforts to obtain more full-length cDNA clones for Arabidopsis and Zea continue.