Plant, Animal & Microbe Genomes X Conference

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

Poster: Genome Sequencing & ESTs
          

LARGE SCALE ANALYSIS OF ESTs IN COMMON WHEAT

¹ Kihara Institute for Biological Research, Yokohama City University, Maioka-cho 641-12, Totsuka-ku, Yokohama 244-0813, Japan

² Department of Biosciences, Fukui Prefectural University, 910-1195, Japan

³ National Institute of Genetics, Mishima, 411-8540, Japan

In order to develop functional genomics of wheat, we carried out large scale analysis of ESTs in common wheat. Total RNAs were extracted from ten wheat tissues, i.e., crowns of 14 days old seedlings and roots at the same stage, spikelets at early flowering and flower differentiation stage, spikes at meiosis, heading date and flowering date, pistils at flowering date, and seeds 10 and 30 days after pollination. The cDNA libraries were constructed from these RNAs, and randomly sequenced from both 5' and 3' ends. At present, 98,635 sequences were accumulated. Based on the sequence homology with the BLAST, 48982 cDNA clones were classified into 24956 gene groups, about one third of which stood as singletons. About 40 % of gene groups had significant similarities to known genes. The compositions of the clones showed library-specific distributions, reflecting gene frequencies expressed in each tissue. While about two thirds of clones had significant similarities to the sequences deposited to the data base. Further homology search of sequenced clones across the tissues revealed that around 10000 independent gene groups can be set up, suggesting that about one third of expressed genes in common wheat have been captured. These data provide useful information to carry out functional genomics in wheat.