Mining Of Expressed Sequence Tags Research Articles

EST mining identifies proteins putatively secreted by the anthracnose pathogen Colletotrichum truncatum

BackgroundColletotrichum truncatum is a haploid, hemibiotrophic, ascomycete fungal pathogen that causes anthracnose disease on many economically important leguminous crops. This pathogen exploits sequential biotrophic- and necrotrophic- infection strategies to colonize the host. Transition from biotrophy to a destructive necrotrophic phase called the biotrophy-necrotrophy switch is critical in symptom development. C. truncatum likely secretes an arsenal of proteins that are implicated in maintaining a compatible interaction with its host. Some of them might be transition specific.ResultsA directional cDNA library was constructed from mRNA isolated from infected Lens culinaris leaflet tissues displaying the biotrophy-necrotrophy switch of C. truncatum and 5000 expressed sequence tags (ESTs) with an average read of > 600 bp from the 5-prime end were generated. Nearly 39% of the ESTs were predicted to encode proteins of fungal origin and among these, 162 ESTs were predicted to contain N-terminal signal peptides (SPs) in their deduced open reading frames (ORFs). The 162 sequences could be assembled into 122 tentative unigenes comprising 32 contigs and 90 singletons. Sequence analyses of unigenes revealed four potential groups: hydrolases, cell envelope associated proteins (CEAPs), candidate effectors and other proteins. Eleven candidate effector genes were identified based on features common to characterized fungal effectors, i.e. they encode small, soluble (lack of transmembrane domain), cysteine-rich proteins with a putative SP. For a selected subset of CEAPs and candidate effectors, semiquantitative RT-PCR showed that these transcripts were either expressed constitutively in both in vitro and in planta or induced during plant infection. Using potato virus X (PVX) based transient expression assays, we showed that one of the candidate effectors, i. e. contig 8 that encodes a cerato-platanin (CP) domain containing protein, unlike CP proteins from other fungal pathogens was unable to elicit a hypersensitive response (HR).ConclusionsThe current study catalogues proteins putatively secreted at the in planta biotrophy-necrotrophy transition of C. truncatum. Some of these proteins may have a role in establishing compatible interaction with the host plant.

Pigeonpea genomics initiative (PGI): an international effort to improve crop productivity of pigeonpea (Cajanus cajan L.)

Pigeonpea (Cajanus cajan), an important food legume crop in the semi-arid regions of the world and the second most important pulse crop in India, has an average crop productivity of 780 kg/ha. The relatively low crop yields may be attributed to non-availability of improved cultivars, poor crop husbandry and exposure to a number of biotic and abiotic stresses in pigeonpea growing regions. Narrow genetic diversity in cultivated germplasm has further hampered the effective utilization of conventional breeding as well as development and utilization of genomic tools, resulting in pigeonpea being often referred to as an ‘orphan crop legume’. To enable genomics-assisted breeding in this crop, the pigeonpea genomics initiative (PGI) was initiated in late 2006 with funding from Indian Council of Agricultural Research under the umbrella of Indo-US agricultural knowledge initiative, which was further expanded with financial support from the US National Science Foundation’s Plant Genome Research Program and the Generation Challenge Program. As a result of the PGI, the last 3 years have witnessed significant progress in development of both genetic as well as genomic resources in this crop through effective collaborations and coordination of genomics activities across several institutes and countries. For instance, 25 mapping populations segregating for a number of biotic and abiotic stresses have been developed or are under development. An 11X-genome coverage bacterial artificial chromosome (BAC) library comprising of 69,120 clones have been developed of which 50,000 clones were end sequenced to generate 87,590 BAC-end sequences (BESs). About 10,000 expressed sequence tags (ESTs) from Sanger sequencing and ca. 2 million short ESTs by 454/FLX sequencing have been generated. A variety of molecular markers have been developed from BESs, microsatellite or simple sequence repeat (SSR)-enriched libraries and mining of ESTs and genomic amplicon sequencing. Of about 21,000 SSRs identified, 6,698 SSRs are under analysis along with 670 orthologous genes using a GoldenGate SNP (single nucleotide polymorphism) genotyping platform, with large scale SNP discovery using Solexa, a next generation sequencing technology, is in progress. Similarly a diversity array technology array comprising of ca. 15,000 features has been developed. In addition, >600 unique nucleotide binding site (NBS) domain containing members of the NBS-leucine rich repeat disease resistance homologs were cloned in pigeonpea; 960 BACs containing these sequences were identified by filter hybridization, BES physical maps developed using high information content fingerprinting. To enrich the genomic resources further, sequenced soybean genome is being analyzed to establish the anchor points between pigeonpea and soybean genomes. In addition, Solexa sequencing is being used to explore the feasibility of generating whole genome sequence. In summary, the collaborative efforts of several research groups under the umbrella of PGI are making significant progress in improving molecular tools in pigeonpea and should significantly benefit pigeonpea genetics and breeding. As these efforts come to fruition, and expanded (depending on funding), pigeonpea would move from an ‘orphan legume crop’ to one where genomics-assisted breeding approaches for a sustainable crop improvement are routine.

EST mining for structure and expression of genes in the region of the wheat high-molecular-weight glutenin loci

An in-depth analysis was carried out with expressed sequence tags (ESTs) for genes in and near the HMW-GS loci. Considerations for using ESTs are discussed, including the occurrence of chimeric and aberrant HMW-GS ESTs. Complete gene sequences demonstrated the feasibility of constructing accurate full-length coding regions from EST assemblies and found, or supported, errors in several previously reported HMW-GS gene sequences. New complete HMW-GS gene sequences are reported for the cultivars Chinese Spring and Glenlea. The Ay subunit gene, which is considered null in cultivated wheats, was shown to transcribe in at least two germplasms. Analyses support the conclusion that of the five known genes within this genomic region, the two HMW-GS genes and the globulin gene are highly expressed. The other two genes, encoding a receptor kinase and a protein kinase, have one and no identifiable wheat EST, respectively, although ESTs are found for the orthologous genes in barley. The ESTs of all five genes within the HMW-GS region are either definitely associated with the endosperm or possibly originate from imbibed seed, suggesting the four distinct gene classes in this region are part of a seed or endosperm chromatin domain. EST resources were also used to determine relative abundance of ESTs for all classes of wheat prolamines and indicated differential levels of expression both among germplasms and among the three genomes of hexaploid wheats.

Mining and survey of simple sequence repeats in expressed sequence tags of dicotyledonous species

Simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers are widely used in many plant and animal genomes due to their abundance, hypervariability, and suitability for high-throughput analysis. Development of SSR markers using molecular methods is time consuming, laborious, and expensive. Use of computational approaches to mine ever-increasing sequences such as expressed sequence tags (ESTs) in public databases permits rapid and economical discovery of SSRs. Most of such efforts to date focused on mining SSRs from monocotyledonous ESTs. In this study, we have computationally mined and examined the abundance of SSRs in more than 1.54 million ESTs belonging to 55 dicotyledonous species. The frequency of ESTs containing SSRs among species ranged from 2.65% to 16.82%. Dinucleotide repeats were found to be the most abundant followed by tri- or mono-nucleotide repeats. The motifs A/T, AG/GA/CT/TC, and AAG/AGA/GAA/CTT/TTC/TCT were the predominant mono-, di-, and tri-nucleotide SSRs, respectively. Most of the mononucleotide SSRs contained 15-25 repeats, whereas the majority of the di- and tri-nucleotide SSRs contained 5-10 repeats. The comprehensive SSR survey data presented here demonstrates the potential of in silico mining of ESTs for rapid development of SSR markers for genetic analysis and applications in dicotyledonous crops.

Tomato SNP Discovery by EST Mining and Resequencing

Many economically important crop species are relatively depauparate in genetic diversity (e.g., soybean, peanut, tomato). DNA polymorphism within cultivated tomato has been estimated to be low based on molecular markers. Through mining of more than 148,000 public tomato expressed sequence tags (ESTs) and full-length cDNAs, we identified 764 EST clusters with potential single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) among more than 15 tomato lines. By sequencing regions from 53 of these clusters in two to three lines, we discovered a wealth of nucleotide polymorphism (62 SNPs and 12 indels in 21 Unigenes), resulting in a verification rate of 27.2% (28 of 103 SNPs predicted in EST clusters were verified). We hypothesize that five regions with 1.6–13-fold more diversity relative to other tested regions are associated with introgressions from wild relatives. Identifying polymorphic, expressed genes in the tomato genome will be useful for both tomato improvement and germplasm conservation.