Plant & Animal Genomes XI Conference

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

Poster: Genome Sequencing & ESTs
            

REVEALING GENES EXPRESSED IN PARASITIC NEMATODES BY SINGLE PASS cDNA SEQUENCING

Genome Sequencing Center, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, MO 63108

Generation of expressed sequence tags (ESTs) is a rapid method for determining the nucleotide sequence of genes expressed in an organism. Such an approach can be applied to identify genes expressed by parasites during a variety of life-cycle stages and at different steps during host-parasite interaction. Projects are underway at the Genome Sequencing Center (GSC, St. Louis) to generate 225,000 ESTs from 25 parasitic nematode species (human, animal and plant parasites) by 2003 and an additional 80,000 ESTs from 7 nematode species will be produced by the Sanger Centre (Hinxton, UK). We anticipate identification of 70-80,000 new nematode genes. At GSC, approximately 150,000 ESTs have been produced to date from 90 stage/tissue specific cDNA libraries. A key goal is to organize and interpret this large dataset in a manner that is favorable to the end user. We will report on the progress of parasitic EST analysis including: i) creation of NemaGene clusters to reduce sequence redundancy, ii) identification of common and rare represented genes, iii) functional classification based on Gene Ontology assignments, iv) biochemical pathway identification using KEGG, and v) identification of genes orthologues in C. elegans and other nematodes. All sequences are publicly available at Genbank's dbEST. Projects details, NemaGene sequences and a list of collaborators are available at nematode.net. The project is funded by grants NIH-NIAID-46593 and NSF-0077503.