Plant & Animal Genomes XII Conference

January 10-14, 2004
Town & Country Convention Center
San Diego, CA

Poster: Other Species
           lettuce

IDENTIFICATION AND MAPPING OF CANDIDATE GENES INVOLVED IN DISEASE RESISTANCE IN LETTUCE

¹ University of California, Davis, Deptartment of Vegetable Crops, Davis, CA 95616

The Compositae Genome Project (http://compgenomics.ucdavis.edu/) EST database is comprised of 68,197 ESTs assembled into a set of 19,523 unigenes from a variety of treatments and tissues derived from two lettuce genotypes, cultivated Lactuca sativa cv. Salinas and wild L. serriola UC96U523 that are the parents of our core mapping population. Using this database, approximately 280 candidate resistance genes (RGC), genes involved in resistance signal transduction, and defense response genes have been identified using HMM and BLAST searches. These candidate genes are currently being mapped using an informative subset of F_7:8 Recombinant Inbred Lines (RILs) from the core mapping population. Simultaneously, phenotypic resistance loci are being located on the consensus map using multiple populations. This is providing a global view of the distribution of genes involved in resistance and candidate sequences encoding known resistance specificities. Functional analysis of candidate genes is being initiated using RNAi.