An Expressed Sequence Tag Analysis for the Fast-Growing Shoots of Bambusa edulis Murno

Abstract

Bamboo is one of the fastest growing plants in the world and is an economically important crop species in Asia. To identify the genes involved in fast shoot growth, an expressed sequence tag analysis was performed on Bambusa edulis Murno fast-growing shoots. Sequencing of the cDNA clones generated 1,402 5'-end high-quality expressed se- quence tags (JG296384-JG297785, average length 655 bp), of which 1,101 clusters (143 consensus and 958 singletons) were revealed by sequence comparison to be unique and 597 (54% of total clusters) of them have a putative ATG start codon. A Basic Local Alignment Search Tool X analysis showed that 995 of these genes were similar to genes present in the National Center for Biotechnology database. A total of 868 genes were most similar to rice genes. The most abundant genes were three thionin-coding genes, which have 27, 17, or 10 clones, respectively, followed by amino- cyclopropanecarboxylate oxidase and cysteine protease. Thionin and putative cell elongation-associated genes, xylo- glucan endotransglycosylase/hydrolase, expansin, cellulose synthase, and pectin esterase were analyzed by real-time reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction using gene- specific primers. These results suggest that this high-quality library could be a good resource for understanding molecular events of bamboo shoot elongation, and the full-length clones could be used for crop improvement studies in the future.