Plant & Animal Genome V Conference
Town & Country Hotel, San Diego, CA, January 12-16, 1997.
PAG-V: W39 - GENE DISCOVERY IN LOBLOLLY PINE
W39
GENE DISCOVERY IN LOBLOLLY PINE
WHETTEN, ROSS(1), Isabel Allona(1), Kristi Swope(2), Elizabeth Shoop(2), Ron Sederoff(2), Claire Kinlaw(3), Ernest Retzel(3)
1. North Carolina State University, Raleigh NC 27695-8008
2. Computational Biology Center, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis MN 55455-0312
3. USDA-Forest Service, PSW Research Station, P.O. Box 245, Berkeley CA 94710
Identification of genes by partial DNA sequencing of cDNAs and comparison of the sequences to previously-described genes and proteins is a powerful tool for biologists. This approach is now being applied to loblolly pine, the most important commercial softwood species in the U.S. Pilot studies supported by the USDA, through the PSW Research Station and through the Plant Genome NRICG program, have allowed us to confirm the value of cDNA sequencing as a gene discovery method in pine. The software tools developed for the Arabidopsis cDNA sequencing project have been applied to the pine cDNA sequences. A collaborative effort is now underway to identify funding sources and mechanisms of data collection, processing and distribution, to support a much larger scale project with the objective of identifying most of the genes expressed in loblolly pine.