Plant & Animal Genomes XI Conference Plant & Animal Genomes XI ConferenceJanuary 11-15, 2003
Town & Country Convention Center
San Diego, CA
Poster: Genome Sequencing & ESTs
The existing resource to study genes and genomes of the genus Phaseolus is very scarce. To accelerate bean genomics, transcriptomics, and proteomics, an international consortium was created, called Phaseomics. The Bean EST (BEST) Project is part of Phaseomics and our primary goals are to sequence 6,000 EST and to generate a fully annotated public database. As of October 2002, there are only 680 bean EST sequences out of 1,547 entries of Phaseolus species in the GenBank database. In this project, two cDNA libraries were constructed from bean seedlings non-inoculated and inoculated with the fungal pathogen Colletotrichum lindemuthianum that causes anthracnose in common bean. The black bean genotype, SEL 1308 was chosen as source of mRNA in this study as it carries the Co-42 gene for anthracnose resistance. cDNA was directionally cloned into the pCMV SPORT6 vector for 5´-end sequencing and the average insert size was 1305 bp, ranging from 800 to 1,900 bp. Single pass sequences were clustered using the computer program CAP3 and analyzed for possible function by similarity to known genes represented in public accessible databases. In the first set of 1,076 reads, 43% were assembled in 122 contigs and 57% were singlets. In addition, 19% of the reads are novel genes with no hits in the GenBank database. This project represents the first step to discover novel genes in beans, to understand gene function, and a valuable source of markers such as SSR and SNP for tagging agronomic traits and for complementing the bean molecular map.