GrainGenes: THE TRITICEAE GENOME DATABASE

¹ USDA/ARS/WRRC 800 Buchanan Street Albany, CA 94710-1105

² Department of Plant Breeding and Biometry Cornell University Ithaca, NY 14853

GrainGenes, the Triticeae genome database, is the most comprehensive source of molecular and phenotypic information on wheat, barley, rye, oats and sugarcane. Curated as a joint effort at the USDA/ARS Western Regional Research Center (WRRC) in Albany, CA and the USDA/ARS Center for Bioinformatics and Comparative Genomics (CBCG) at Cornell University (Ithaca, NY), GrainGenes is a central repository for information on genetic and physical maps, DNA probes, germplasm, pathology, QTLs and other accessions. GrainGenes is a publicly accessible database, administered at a new facility at Cornell (see Demeter's Genomes at http://ars-genome.cornell.edu), made available though a WWW server ( http://wheat.pw.usda.gov), and can be downloaded to run as a stand-alone program on any Unix, Windows 95/98/NT or Macintosh computer (ftp://ars-genome.cornell.edu/pub/GrainGenes). GrainGenes may also be accessed through mirror sites at INRA (France, http://grain.jouy.inra.fr) and the UK CropNet (http://synteny.life.nott.ac.uk/). Additions to GrainGenes since PAG-VII include EST sequences for 468 mapped probes (Kuenzel ), a wheat microsatellite map containing 279 SSR loci (Röder, et al.), a high density barley AFLP map with images of the mapped polymorphisms (Qi), linkage maps for Aegilops umbellulata (Zhang et al.) and durum (Triticum turgidum, Blanco, et al.), and an online version of the Catalogue of Gene Symbols for Wheat. Planned additions to GrainGenes in 2000 include new Triticeae consensus maps, current literature accessions and enhanced educational facets. In July, 2000 GrainGenes will unveil a new database of Expressed Sequence Tags (ESTs) from the International Triticeae EST Cooperative (ITEC, see http://wheat.pw.usda.gov/genome) with an anticipated 40,000 sequences during the first phase and a projected 300,000 ESTs sequenced for wheat and 300,000 ESTs sequenced for barley within the next four years.