Plant & Animal Genomes XI Conference

January 11-15, 2003
Town & Country Convention Center
San Diego, CA

Poster: Genome Sequencing & ESTs
            

EST APPROACH TO CHARACTERIZATION OF DEFENSE GENE EXPRESSION DURING RICE AND RICE BLAST INTERACTION

¹ Department of Plant Pathology, The Ohio State University, Columbus OH 43210

² Arizona Genomics Institute, Department of Plant Sciences, University of Arizona, AZ 85721

³ Fungal Genomics Laboratory, Department of Plant Pathology, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC 27695

Rice blast, caused by the fungus Magnaporthe grisea, is one of the most important diseases in rice production worldwide. Host resistance is the most effective way to control the disease. To understand the molecular basis of host resistance to rice blast, an EST sequencing approach is being used to profile gene expression at early infection stages by M. grisea. Six standard cDNA libraries were made using leaf tissues harvested from resistant, partially resistant and susceptible reactions. Another cDNA library was made using leaf tissue of the lesion mimic mutant spl11. About 7,000 cDNA clones from each library were randomly picked and are being sequenced at the Arizona Genomics Institute. Preliminary sequencing analysis and BLAST search of the first cDNA library showed that 4575 unique genes were obtained from 6126 successful reads. The website displaying the EST results is at . Detailed sequencing results of all cDNA libraries will be presented. *Supported by NSF-Plant Genome Program # 0115642