Plant & Animal Genomes XIV Conference

January 14-18, 2006
Town & Country Convention Center
San Diego, CA

An EST Resource For Oak (Quercus robur And Quercus petreae)

franck SALIN¹ , Manon MOREAU¹ , Phillipe Chaumeil¹ , Grégoire Le Provost¹ , Jean-Marc Frigério Frigério¹ , Nacer Mohellibi² , Arnaud Couloux³ , Patrick Wincker³ , Oliver Brendel⁴ , Antoine Kremer¹ , Christophe Plomion ¹

¹  UMR BIOGECO, INRA équipe de génétique 69 route d'Arcachon 33610 Cestas France

²  Centre de Bioinformatique de Bordeaux Plateforme Génomique fonctionnelle Bordeaux Université Bordeaux 2 33076 Bordeaux France

³  Genoscope - Centre National de Séquençage 2 rue Gaston Crémieux CP5706 91057 Evry cedex France

⁴  UMR INRA-UHP Ecologie et Ecophysiologie Forestières, IFR 110 Génomique Ecophysiologie et Ecologie Fonctionnelle, 54280 Champenoux France

The Fagaceae family comprises about 1,000 woody species worldwide, spread throughout the northern hemisphere. About half belong to the Quercus family. These oaks are often a source of raw material for carpentry, furniture, cabinet making, veneer, cask industry and fuelwood. Pedonculate and sessile oaks, are among the most important deciduous forest tree species in Europe. In France for instance, they represent more than 30% of the total forested area. Despite their ecological and economical importance, very few genomic resources have yet been generated for these species. Here, we describe the development of an EST catalogue that will support an ecosystem genomics study, where geneticists, ecophysiologists, molecular biologists and ecologists are bring together for understanding, monitoring and predicting genetic diversity. Four cDNA libraries were constructed using RNA extracted from different tissues (leave, root, differentiating xylem and bud). A mean of 10,000 sequencing runs were performed per library. About 40,000 reads where then clustered using the StackPack software and are currently being annotated (gene function and metabolic classification). Given that several trees were included in the early step of RNA extraction, in silico mining of SSR and SNP polymorphisms will provide a source of molecular markers for genetic mapping, the study of the genetic architecture of quantitative traits, association mapping, and functional diversity analysis to understand the response of these organisms to future environmental changes.