Plant & Animal Genome IX Conference

Poster: Sequencing & EST
P01_73.html

CHARACTERIZATION OF WHEAT EXPRESSED SEQUENCE TAGS FROM FUSARIUM GRAMINEARUM INFECTED SUMAI3

¹ Agronomy and Plant Genetics, University of Minnesota, 1991 Upper Buford Circle, St. Paul MN 55108

² Plant Sciences Department, College of Agriculture, Universidad de la Republica, Montevideo, URUGUAY

³ Center for Computational Genomics and Bioinformatics (CCGB), University of Minnesota, 420 Delaware Street SE, Minneapolis, MN 55455

Fusarium graminearum infects wheat and barley flowers to cause head blight or scab. Scab is a serious disease of wheat and barley that reduces grain yield and also compromises grain quality because of the accumulation of trichothecene toxins. As a first step to identify unique genes that may be involved in plant defense responses we are establishing an expressed sequence tag (EST) database. Our initial focus is on Sumai3, a variety of wheat that exhibits resistance to spread of the fungus in the spike. A cDNA library was constructed from F. graminearum-infected, Sumai3 wheat spike tissue at 0, 6, 12, 24, 36 and 48 hours after inoculation. Clones from this library were randomly selected for sequencing. Currently we have 1643 ESTs, which comprise 961 singlet sequences and 682 sequences that have been contiged into 295 consensus sequences, i.e. a total of 1256 singlet ESTs. We will report on progress to date in identifying structural and functional genes by Blastx searches of Genbank.