Plant & Animal Genomes XIV Conference

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

Whole Genome Analysis Of Castor Bean (Ricinus Communis)

Agnes P. Chan¹ , Julia Redman¹ , Gery Allan² , Paul Keim² , Claire Fraser¹ , Jacques Ravel¹ , Pablo D. Rabinowicz¹

¹  The Institute for Genomic Research, 9712 Medical Center Dr., Rockville, MD 20850, USA

²  Northern Arizona University, S. Beaver St. Box 5640, Flagstaff, AZ 86011, USA

Ricinus communis, also known as castor bean, is native from Africa and warmer parts of Asia. It is a perennial shrub, sometimes tree-like ranging in size from three to fifteen feet tall. It is a member of the family Euphorbiaceae, which includes the rubber tree and other spurges. It is cultivated in many tropical and subtropical areas of the world and has been introduced in the United States and naturalized. Castor oil is extracted from R. communis seeds and is used for industrial, medicinal and cosmetic purposes. The United States is one of the world’s largest importers of castor oil and its derivatives. One of the problems associated with R. communis seeds is that they contain ricin, a water-soluble highly toxic protein that can affect humans and animals. Ricin is one of the deadliest natural poisons, and most toxic when administered intravenously or inhaled as fine particles. It is a type 2 ribosome-inactivating enzyme (RIP) that can be extracted from seeds through a relatively simple process and has been used in criminal cases. In order to understand more deeply the biology of R. communis we are conducting a draft assembly of the genome by whole genome shotgun sequencing of its ~400 Mbp genome. Approximately 4X sequence coverage of the genome will be generated during this project, in addition to 40,000 ESTs from different tissues that will be essential for gene discovery and annotation. One of the immediate uses of the sequence will be to develop markers for genotyping. Preliminary assemblies and analyses will be presented.
This project is funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health (NIAID,NIH) through the Microbial Genome Sequencing Center at TIGR (http://www.tigr.org/msc).