Dataset Information

Gene discovery from Jatropha curcas by sequencing of ESTs from normalized and full-length enriched cDNA library from developing seeds.

ABSTRACT: BACKGROUND: Jatropha curcas L. is promoted as an important non-edible biodiesel crop worldwide. Jatropha oil, which is a triacylglycerol, can be directly blended with petro-diesel or transesterified with methanol and used as biodiesel. Genetic improvement in jatropha is needed to increase the seed yield, oil content, drought and pest resistance, and to modify oil composition so that it becomes a technically and economically preferred source for biodiesel production. However, genetic improvement efforts in jatropha could not take advantage of genetic engineering methods due to lack of cloned genes from this species. To overcome this hurdle, the current gene discovery project was initiated with an objective of isolating as many functional genes as possible from J. curcas by large scale sequencing of expressed sequence tags (ESTs). RESULTS: A normalized and full-length enriched cDNA library was constructed from developing seeds of J. curcas. The cDNA library contained about 1 × 10(6) clones and average insert size of the clones was 2.1 kb. Totally 12,084 ESTs were sequenced to average high quality read length of 576 bp. Contig analysis revealed 2258 contigs and 4751 singletons. Contig size ranged from 2-23 and there were 7333 ESTs in the contigs. This resulted in 7009 unigenes which were annotated by BLASTX. It showed 3982 unigenes with significant similarity to known genes and 2836 unigenes with significant similarity to genes of unknown, hypothetical and putative proteins. The remaining 191 unigenes which did not show similarity with any genes in the public database may encode for unique genes. Functional classification revealed unigenes related to broad range of cellular, molecular and biological functions. Among the 7009 unigenes, 6233 unigenes were identified to be potential full-length genes. CONCLUSIONS: The high quality normalized cDNA library was constructed from developing seeds of J. curcas for the first time and 7009 unigenes coding for diverse biological functions including oil biosynthesis were identified. These genes will serve as invaluable genetic resource for crop improvement in jatropha to make it an ideal and profitable crop for biodiesel production.

SUBMITTER: Natarajan P

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3091748 | biostudies-literature | 2010

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Gene discovery from Jatropha curcas by sequencing of ESTs from normalized and full-length enriched cDNA library from developing seeds.

Natarajan Purushothaman P Kanagasabapathy Deepa D Gunadayalan Gnanasekaran G Panchalingam Jasintha J Shree Noopur N Sugantham Priyanka Annabel PA Singh Kavita Kumari KK Madasamy Parani P

BMC genomics 20101027

<h4>Background</h4>Jatropha curcas L. is promoted as an important non-edible biodiesel crop worldwide. Jatropha oil, which is a triacylglycerol, can be directly blended with petro-diesel or transesterified with methanol and used as biodiesel. Genetic improvement in jatropha is needed to increase the seed yield, oil content, drought and pest resistance, and to modify oil composition so that it becomes a technically and economically preferred source for biodiesel production. However, genetic impro ...[more]

PMID: 20979643

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Project description:BackgroundSesame (Sesamum indicum) is one of the most important oilseed crops with high oil contents and rich nutrient value. However, genetic improvement efforts in sesame could not get benefit from molecular biology technology due to poor DNA and RNA sequence resources. In this study, we carried out a large scale of expressed sequence tags (ESTs) sequencing from developing sesame seeds and further conducted analysis on seed storage products-related genes.ResultsA normalized and full-length enriched cDNA library from 5 ~ 30 days old immature seeds was constructed and randomly sequenced, leading to generation of 41,248 expressed sequence tags (ESTs) which then formed 4,713 contigs and 27,708 singletons with 44.9% uniESTs being putative full-length open reading frames. Approximately 26,091 of all these uniESTs have significant matches to the counterparts in Nr database of GenBank, and 21,628 of them were assigned to one or more Gene ontology (GO) terms. Homologous genes involved in oil biosynthesis were identified including some conservative transcription factors regulating oil biosynthesis such as LEAFY COTYLEDON1 (LEC1), PICKLE (PKL), WRINKLED1 (WRI1) and majority of them were found for the first time in sesame seeds. One hundred and 17 ESTs were identified possibly involved in biosynthesis of sesame lignans, sesamin and sesamolin. In total, 9,347 putative functional genes from developing seeds were identified, which accounts for one third of total genes in the sesame genome. Further analysis of the uniESTs identified 1,949 non-redundant simple sequence repeats (SSRs).ConclusionsThis study has provided an overview of genes expressed during sesame seed development. This collection of sesame full-length cDNAs covered a wide variety of genes in seeds, in particular, candidate genes involved in biosynthesis of sesame oils and lignans. These EST sequences enriched with full length will contribute to comparative genomic studies on sesame and other oilseed plants and serve as an abundant information platform for functional marker development and functional gene study.

Project description:BACKGROUND: Genome research in farm animals will expand our basic knowledge of the genetic control of complex traits, and the results will be applied in the livestock industry to improve meat quality and productivity, as well as to reduce the incidence of disease. A combination of quantitative trait locus mapping and microarray analysis is a useful approach to reduce the overall effort needed to identify genes associated with quantitative traits of interest. RESULTS: We constructed a full-length enriched cDNA library from porcine backfat tissue. The estimated average size of the cDNA inserts was 1.7 kb, and the cDNA fullness ratio was 70%. In total, we deposited 16,110 high-quality sequences in the dbEST division of GenBank (accession numbers: DT319652-DT335761). For all the expressed sequence tags (ESTs), approximately 10.9 Mb of porcine sequence were generated with an average length of 674 bp per EST (range: 200-952 bp). Clustering and assembly of these ESTs resulted in a total of 5,008 unique sequences with 1,776 contigs (35.46%) and 3,232 singleton (65.54%) ESTs. From a total of 5,008 unique sequences, 3,154 (62.98%) were similar to other sequences, and 1,854 (37.02%) were identified as having no hit or low identity (<95%) and 60% coverage in The Institute for Genomic Research (TIGR) gene index of Sus scrofa. Gene ontology (GO) annotation of unique sequences showed that approximately 31.7, 32.3, and 30.8% were assigned molecular function, biological process, and cellular component GO terms, respectively. A total of 1,854 putative novel transcripts resulted after comparison and filtering with the TIGR SsGI; these included a large percentage of singletons (80.64%) and a small proportion of contigs (13.36%). CONCLUSION: The sequence data generated in this study will provide valuable information for studying expression profiles using EST-based microarrays and assist in the condensation of current pig TCs into clusters representing longer stretches of cDNA sequences. The isolation of genes expressed in backfat tissue is the first step toward a better understanding of backfat tissue on a genomic basis.

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Project description:BACKGROUND: The obligate parasitic plant witchweed (Striga hermonthica) infects major cereal crops such as sorghum, maize, and millet, and is the most devastating weed pest in Africa. An understanding of the nature of its parasitism would contribute to the development of more sophisticated management methods. However, the molecular and genomic resources currently available for the study of S. hermonthica are limited. RESULTS: We constructed a full-length enriched cDNA library of S. hermonthica, sequenced 37,710 clones from the library, and obtained 67,814 expressed sequence tag (EST) sequences. The ESTs were assembled into 17,317 unigenes that included 10,319 contigs and 6,818 singletons. The S. hermonthica unigene dataset was subjected to a comparative analysis with other plant genomes or ESTs. Approximately 80% of the unigenes have homologs in other dicotyledonous plants including Arabidopsis, poplar, and grape. We found that 589 unigenes are conserved in the hemiparasitic Triphysaria species but not in other plant species. These are good candidates for genes specifically involved in plant parasitism. Furthermore, we found 1,445 putative simple sequence repeats (SSRs) in the S. hermonthica unigene dataset. We tested 64 pairs of PCR primers flanking the SSRs to develop genetic markers for the detection of polymorphisms. Most primer sets amplified polymorphicbands from individual plants collected at a single location, indicating high genetic diversity in S. hermonthica. We selected 10 primer pairs to analyze S. hermonthica harvested in the field from different host species and geographic locations. A clustering analysis suggests that genetic distances are not correlated with host specificity. CONCLUSIONS: Our data provide the first extensive set of molecular resources for studying S. hermonthica, and include EST sequences, a comparative analysis with other plant genomes, and useful genetic markers. All the data are stored in a web-based database and freely available. These resources will be useful for genome annotation, gene discovery, functional analysis, molecular breeding, epidemiological studies, and studies of plant evolution.

Dataset Information

Gene discovery from Jatropha curcas by sequencing of ESTs from normalized and full-length enriched cDNA library from developing seeds.

Publications

Gene discovery from Jatropha curcas by sequencing of ESTs from normalized and full-length enriched cDNA library from developing seeds.

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