Plant & Animal Genomes XV Conference

January 13-17, 2007
Town & Country Convention Center
San Diego, CA

The Compositae Genome Project

María José Truco¹ , Dean Lavelle¹ , Leah McHale¹ , Jason Argyris² , David Caldwell¹ , Marta Matvienko¹ , Alex Kozik¹ , Oswaldo Ochoa¹ , Smitha Mathrakott¹ , Kent Bradford² , Loren Rieseberg³ , Steve Knapp⁴ , Rick Kesseli⁵ , David Still⁶ , Richard Michelmore¹

¹  UC Davis Genome Center, One Shield Ave. University of California, Davis, CA 95616

²  Department of Plant Sciences,University of California, Davis, CA 95616

³  Department of Botany, University of British Columbia, 2329 West Mall Vancouver, BC Canada V6T 1Z4

⁴  C A G T, University of Georgia, Athens , GA 30602

⁵  Department of Biology, University of Massachusetts-Boston,100 Morrissey Blvd. Boston, MA 02125

⁶  Department of Horticulture/Plant & Soil Science Cal Poly Pomona 3801 West Temple Avenue Pomona, CA 91768

As a continuation of the Compositae Genome Project (CGP; http://cgpdb.ucdavis.edu) which generated over 120K ESTs for both lettuce and sunflower, the second phase of the Compositae Genome Project has expanded the number of ESTs sequenced within the Compositae to over 500K ESTs. These new sequences come from eighteen species including cultivated and wild types from the Lactuca, Helianthus, Cichorium, Carthamus, Centaurea and Taraxacum genera. These include six crop and twelve weedy species. The use of normalized in addition to standard libraries greatly increased our ability to detect unique sequences not represented in previous EST sets. We now have over 35,000 unigenes for Lactuca spp. Candidate genes found within these ESTs are being used in comparative studies of domestication and weediness traits. In order to curate and query all the genetic and sequence data, we have developed a comprehensive Compositae database (http://cgpdb.ucdavis.edu/). In the five species of the Lactuca genus, parallel to the comparative studies at the sequence level, we have conducted extensive phenotypic analysis. Diversity in bolting, flowering time, leaf shape, inflorescence morphology, seed germination, etc., among others, has been evaluated.