Plant, Animal & Microbe Genomes X Conference

January 12-16, 2002
Town & Country Convention Center
San Diego, CA

Workshop: Compositae
            

OVERVIEW OF THE COMPOSITAE GENOMICS PROJECT

¹ Department of Vegetable Crops, University of California, Davis, CA 95616, USA.

² Department of Crop and Soil Science, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR 97331-3002.

³ Department of Biology, Indiana University, 1001 East Third Street, Bloomington, IN 47405-3700, USA.

⁴ Department of Biology, University of Massachusetts, Boston, MA 02125, USA.

Sunflower (Helianthus annuus) and lettuce (Lactuca sativa) are economically-important members of the Compositae, an ecologically successful and genetically diverse family. Wild and domesticated forms of lettuce and sunflower are dramatically different. The lack of information on the genetic basis of these differences and their linkage relationships has slowed introgression of useful traits from wild germplasm. The Compositae Genomics Project (CGP) will study the genes underlying agriculturally important, qualitative and quantitative traits by conducting parallel genetic analyses on lettuce and sunflower to dissect the genetic basis of traits that distinguish domesticated from wild forms. We are developing resources for functional and comparative genomics of lettuce and sunflower capitalizing on the wealth of knowledge being developed for Arabidopsis. We are generating an extensive expressed sequence tag (EST) databases from lettuce and sunflower (~80,000 total). The first phase of this is complete. Twelve libraries from two genotypes of each species have been made and high throughput sequencing is in progress. A database (cgp.ucdavis.edu) is under development and the EST sequences should be publicly accessible within the next six months. Candidate genes of known function in other species will be mapped relative to phenotypic traits. The extent of synteny among sunflower, lettuce and Arabidopsis will be determined by mapping selected sequences in lettuce and sunflower and by comparison to the genomic sequence of Arabidopsis. This will allow the development of PCR-based markers for high-throughput genetic analyses and marker-assisted selection.