Rolling circle amplification of genomic templates for inverse PCR (RCA–GIP): a method for 5′- and 3′-genome walking without anchoring

We have devised an improved method of genome walking, named rolling circle amplification of genomic templates for Inverse PCR (RCA–GIP). The method is based on the generation of circular genomic DNA fragments, followed by rolling circle amplification of the circular genomic DNA using ϕ29 DNA polymerase without need for attachment of anchor sequences. In this way from the circular genomic DNA fragments, after RCA amplification, a large amount of linear concatemers is generated suitable for Inverse PCR template that can be amplified, sequenced or cloned allowing the isolation of the 3′- and 5′- of unknown ends of genomic sequences. To prove the concept of the proposed methodology, we used this procedure to isolate the promoter regions from different species. Herein as an example we present the isolation of four promoter regions from Crocus sativus, a crop cultivated for saffron production.     

Local repeat sequence organization of an intergenic spacer in the chloroplast genome ofChlamydomonas reinhardtii leads to DNA expansion and sequence scrambling: A complex mode of “copychoice replication”?

Parent-specific, randomly amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) markers were obtained from total genomic DNA ofChlamydomonas reinhardtii. Such parent-specific RAPD bands (genomic fingerprints) segregated uniparentally (through mt⁺) in a cross between a pair of polymorphic interfertile strains ofChlamydomonas (C. reinhardtii andC. minnesotti), suggesting that they originated from the chloroplast genome. Southern analysis mapped the RAPD-markers to the chloroplast genome. One of the RAPD-markers, “P2” (1.6 kb) was cloned, sequenced and was fine mapped to the 3 kb region encompassing 3′ end of 23S, full 5S and intergenic region between 5S and psbA. This region seems divergent enough between the two parents, such that a specific PCR designed for a parental specific chloroplast sequence within this region, amplified a marker in that parent only and not in the other, indicating the utility of RAPD-scan for locating the genomic regions of sequence divergence. Remarkably, the RAPD-product, “P2” seems to have originated from a PCR-amplification of a much smaller (about 600 bp), but highly repeat-rich (direct and inverted) domain of the 3 kb region in a manner that yielded no linear sequence alignment with its own template sequence. The amplification yielded the same uniquely “sequence-scrambled” product, whether the template used for PCR was total cellular DNA, chloroplast DNA or a plasmid clone DNA corresponding to that region. The PCR product, a "unique" new sequence, had lost the repetitive organization of the template genome where it had originated from and perhaps represented a “complex path” of copy-choice replication.     

From stop to start: tandem gene arrangement, copy number and trans-splicing sites in the dinoflagellate Amphidinium carterae

Dinoflagellate genomes present unique challenges including large size, modified DNA bases, lack of nucleosomes, and condensed chromosomes. EST sequencing has shown that many genes are found as many slightly different variants implying that many copies are present in the genome. As a preliminary survey of the genome our goal was to obtain genomic sequences for 47 genes from the dinoflagellate Amphidinium carterae. A PCR approach was used to avoid problems with large insert libraries. One primer set was oriented inward to amplify the genomic complement of the cDNA and a second primer set would amplify outward between tandem repeats of the same gene. Each gene was also tested for a spliced leader using cDNA as template. Almost all (14/15) of the highly expressed genes (i.e. those with high representation in the cDNA pool) were shown to be in tandem arrays with short intergenic spacers, and most were trans-spliced. Only two moderately expressed genes were found in tandem arrays. A polyadenylation signal was found in genomic copies containing the sequence AAAAG/C at the exact polyadenylation site and was conserved between species. Four genes were found to have a high intron density (>5 introns) while most either lacked introns, or had only one to three. Actin was selected for deeper sequencing of both genomic and cDNA copies. Two clusters of actin copies were found, separated from each other by many non-coding features such as intron size and sequence. One intron-rich gene was selected for genomic walking using inverse PCR, and was not shown to be in a tandem repeat. The first glimpse of dinoflagellate genome indicates two general categories of genes in dinoflagellates, a highly expressed tandem repeat class and an intron rich less expressed class. This combination of features appears to be unique among eukaryotes.     

Identification of novel single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in deer (Odocoileus spp.) using the BovineSNP50 BeadChip

Single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) are growing in popularity as a genetic marker for investigating evolutionary processes. A panel of SNPs is often developed by comparing large quantities of DNA sequence data across multiple individuals to identify polymorphic sites. For non-model species, this is particularly difficult, as performing the necessary large-scale genomic sequencing often exceeds the resources available for the project. In this study, we trial the Bovine SNP50 BeadChip developed in cattle (Bos taurus) for identifying polymorphic SNPs in cervids Odocoileus hemionus (mule deer and black-tailed deer) and O. virginianus (white-tailed deer) in the Pacific Northwest. We found that 38.7% of loci could be genotyped, of which 5% (n = 1068) were polymorphic. Of these 1068 polymorphic SNPs, a mixture of putatively neutral loci (n = 878) and loci under selection (n = 190) were identified with the F(ST)-outlier method. A range of population genetic analyses were implemented using these SNPs and a panel of 10 microsatellite loci. The three types of deer could readily be distinguished with both the SNP and microsatellite datasets. This study demonstrates that commercially developed SNP chips are a viable means of SNP discovery for non-model organisms, even when used between very distantly related species (the Bovidae and Cervidae families diverged some 25.1-30.1 million years before present).     

Analysis of SSRs derived from grape ESTs

One hundred and twenty four microsatellites were isolated from analysis of 5000 Vitis expressed sequence tags (ESTs). A diversity of dinucleotide and trinucleotide simple sequence repeat (SSR) motifs were present. Primers were designed for 16 of these SSRs and they were tested on seven accessions. Ten of the sixteen primer pairs resulted in PCR products of the expected size. All ten functional primers were polymorphic across the accessions studied. Polymorphisms were evident at the level of cultivars, Vitis species, and between related genera. SSRs that were from the 3′ untranslated region (3′UTR) were most polymorphic at the cultivar level, the 5′ untranslated region (5′ UTR) SSRs were most polymorphic between cultivars and species, and those SSRs within coding sequence were most polymorphic between species and genera. These results show that EST-derived SSRs in Vitis are useful as they are polymorphic and highly transferable. With EST SSRs being applicable to studies at several taxonomic levels, the large number of SSRs (approximately 1000) that will be available from an expanded EST database of 45 000 will have many potential applications in mapping and identity research. Received: 4 June 1999 / Accepted: 21 September 1999     

Single-reaction for SNP Genotyping on Agarose Gel by Allele-specific PCR in Black Poplar (Populus nigra L.)

The wide development of single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) markers also in non-model species increases the need for inexpensive methods that do not require sophisticated equipment and time for optimization. This work presents a new method for polymerase chain reaction (PCR) amplification of multiple specific alleles (PAMSA), which allows efficient discrimination of SNP polymorphisms in one reaction tube with standard PCR conditions. This improved PAMSA requires only three unlabeled primers: a common reverse primer and two allele-specific primers having a tail of different length to differentiate the two SNP alleles by the size of amplification products on agarose gel. A destabilizing mismatch within the five bases of the 3′ end is also added to improve the allele specificity. To validate the accuracy of this method, 94 full-sib individuals were genotyped with three SNPs and compared to the genotypes obtained by cleaved amplified polymorphic sequence (CAPS) or derived CAPS. This method is flexible, inexpensive, and well suited for high throughput and automated genotyping.     

A simple and reliable method for DNA extraction from bivalve mantle

A simple and reliable method was developed for extracting genomic DNA from preserved mantle tissues of Pacific oyster Crassostrea gigas for reproducible PCR amplification. The method was based on destruction of the tissue using Proteinase K, Chelex 100 resin, detergents, and urea, followed by preferential capturing of genomic DNA with silica particles. Approximately 5 mg of mantle tissue provided a sufficient quality and quantity of DNA for several hundreds of PCR reactions amplifying the hypervariable mitochondrial DNA intergenic spacer, which is a useful genetic marker for population structure analysis of Pacific oyster. The method can be applied for DNA preparation from not only fresh and frozen but also ethanol-preserved mantle tissues, so this rapid and economical method can serve for investigating a large number of bivalve specimens collected in the field and next transported in ethanol at ambient temperature.     

Intron-flanking EST–PCR markers: from genetic marker development to gene structure analysis in Rhododendron

With a long-term goal of constructing a linkage map of Rhododendron enriched with gene-specific markers, we utilized Rhododendron catawbiense ESTs for the development of high-efficiency (in terms of generating polymorphism frequency) PCR-based markers. Using the gene-sequence alignment between Rhododendron ESTs and the genomic sequences of Arabidopsis homologs, we developed ‘intron-flanking‘ EST–PCR-based primers that would anneal in conserved exon regions and amplify across the more highly diverged introns. These primers resulted in increased efficiency (61% vs. 13%; 4.7-fold) of polymorphism-detection compared with conventional EST–PCR methods, supporting the assumption that intron regions are more diverged than exons. Significantly, this study demonstrates that Arabidopsis genome database can be useful in developing gene-specific PCR-based markers for other non-model plant species for which the EST data are available but genomic sequences are not. The comparative analysis of intron sizes between Rhododendron and Arabidopsis (made possible in this study by aligning of Rhododendron ESTs with Arabidopsis genomic sequences and the sequencing of Rhododendron genomic PCR products) provides the first insight into the gene structure of Rhododendron. Electronic Supplementary Material Supplementary material is available for this article at     

白菜的EST标记及其对油菜的通用性

根据白菜的表达序列标签,设计了28对引物。在对引物、dNTP、MgCl2的浓度及退火温度等参数进行测试后,建立了合适的PCR反应体系。在此反应体系下,以构建EST的白菜自交系A的DNA为模板,对设计的引物进行了筛选,发现有18对引物能对白菜DNA扩增出产物。用筛选出来的引物分别对17个白菜类品种进行PCR扩增,用琼脂糖凝胶电泳分析其产物的多态性,发现10对引物有多态性,这占了筛选引物的55.6%。为检测白菜EST标记的通用性,进一步利用设计的引物对不同油菜品种的DNA进行PCR扩增。在检测的28对引物中,共有24对引物能扩增出产物,占引物总数的85.7%,显示多态性的引物为18对,占引物总数的64.3%.。在对白菜DNA能扩增出产物的18对引物中,对油菜完全可用,且有13对引物产生多态性。而在那些对白菜未扩增出产物的10对引物中,也有6对能扩增出产物,其中5对显示多态性。文章研究结果证明,通过EST建立分子标记是可行的,而且这种标记对近缘物种是可通用的。     

Target region amplification polymorphism: A novel marker technique for plant genotyping

The advent of large-scale DNA sequencing technology has generated a tremendous amount of sequence information for many important organisms. We have developed a rapid and efficient PCR-based technique, which uses bioinformatics tools and expressed sequence tag (EST) database information to generate polymorphic markers around targeted candidate gene sequences. This target region amplification polymorphism (TRAP) technique uses 2 primers of 18 nucleotides to generate markers. One of the primers, the fixed primer, is designed from the targeted EST sequence in the database; the second primer, the arbitrary primer, is an arbitrary sequence with either an AT-or GC-rich core to anneal with an intron or exon, respectively. PCR amplification is run for the first 5 cycles with an annealing temperature of 35°C, followed by 35 cycles with an annealing temperature of 50°C. For different plant species, each PCR reaction can generate as many as 50 scorable fragments with sizes ranging from 50–900 bp when separated on a 6.5% polyacrylamide sequencing gel. The TRAP technique should be useful in genotyping germplasm collections and in tagging genes governing desirable agronomic traits of crop plants.     

Development and Characterization of EST-SSR Markers in the Eastern Oyster <Emphasis Type="Italic">Crassostrea virginica</Emphasis>

Simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers were developed from expressed sequence tags (ESTs) in the eastern oyster (Crassostrea virginica). ESTs of the eastern oyster were downloaded from GenBank and screened for SSRs with at least eight units of dinucleotide or five units of tri-, tetra-, penta-, and hexa-nucleotide repeats. The screening of 9101 ESTs identified 127 (1.4%) SSR-containing sequences. Primers were designed for 88 SSR-containing ESTs with good and sufficient flanking sequences. Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) amplification was successful for 71 primer pairs, including 19 (27%) pairs that amplified fragments longer than expected sizes, probably due to introns. Sixty-six pairs that produced fragments shorter than 800 bp were screened for polymorphism in five oysters from three populations via polyacrylamide gels, and 53 of them (80%) were polymorphic. Fifty-three polymorphic SSRs were labeled and genotyped in 30 oysters from three populations via an automated sequencer. Five of the SSRs amplified more than two fragments per oyster, suggesting locus duplication. The remaining 48 SSRs had 2 alleles per individual, including 11 with null alleles. In the 30 oysters analyzed, the SSRs had an average of 9.3 alleles per locus, ranging from 2 to 24. Forty-three loci segregated in a family with 100 progeny, with nine showing significant deviation from Mendelian ratios (three after Bonferroni correction). Seventy percent of the loci were successfully amplified in C. rhizophorae and 34% in C. gigas. This study demonstrates that ESTs are valuable resources for the development of SSR markers in the eastern oyster, and EST-derived SSRs are more transferable across species than genomic SSRs.     

Characterization and comparison of microsatellites derived from repeat-enriched libraries and expressed sequence tags

The construction of high-density linkage maps for use in identifying loci underlying important traits requires the development of large numbers of polymorphic genetic markers spanning the entire genome at regularly spaced intervals. As part of our efforts to develop markers for rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss), we performed a comparison of allelic variation between microsatellite markers developed from expressed sequence tag (EST) data and anonymous markers identified from repeat-enriched libraries constructed from genomic DNA. A subset of 70 markers (37 from EST databases and 33 from repeat enriched libraries) was characterized with respect to polymorphism information content (PIC), number of alleles, repeat number, locus duplication within the genome and ability to amplify in other salmonid species. Higher PIC was detected in dinucleotide microsatellites derived from ESTs than anonymous markers (72.7% vs. 54.0%). In contrast, dinucleotide repeat numbers were higher for anonymous microsatellites than for EST derived microsatellites (27.4 vs.18.1). A higher rate of cross-species amplification was observed for EST microsatellites. Approximately half of each marker type was duplicated within the genome. Unlike single-copy markers, amplification of duplicated microsatellites in other salmonids was not correlated to phylogenetic distance. Genomic microsatellites proved more useful than EST derived microsatellites in discriminating among the salmonids. In total, 428 microsatellite markers were developed in this study for mapping and population genetic studies in rainbow trout.     

Cloning and bioinformatics analysis of a novel acidophilic β-mannanase gene,Auman5A,from Aspergillus usamii YL-01-78

The full-length cDNA sequence, which encodes a novel acidophilic β-mannanase (abbreviated as AuMan5A) of Aspergillus usamii YL-01-78, was amplified by 3′ and 5′ rapid amplification of cDNA ends (RACE) using the total RNA as template. The cDNA sequence is 1,427 bp in length, including 5′ and 3′ non-coding regions and an open reading frame (ORF). The ORF encodes a 21-aa signal peptide, a 17-aa propeptide, and a 345-aa mature peptide (AuMan5A) with the calculated M.W. of 37,614 Da and pI of 4.09 and two putative N-glycosylation sites. Online analysis of amino acid sequence homology demonstrated that the AuMan5A belongs to the glycoside hydrolase (GH) family 5. Its three-dimensional structure was predicted using Pred3D Web Server 1.0 based on the crystal structure of the T. reesei RutC-30 β-mannanase (1QNO) from the GH family 5. Furthermore, the complete DNA sequence encoding the AuMan5A, designated as Auman5A, was cloned from the genomic DNA of A. usamii YL-01-78 by the conventional PCR and pUCm-T vector-mediated PCR techniques. The cloned Auman5A is 2,168 bp in length, harboring 5′ and 3′ flanking regulatory regions and the full-length cDNA sequence in which two short introns with 63 and 60 bp are inserted, respectively.     

Bin mapping of genomic and EST-derived SSRs in melon (Cucumis melo L.)

We report the development of 158 primer pairs flanking SSR motifs in genomic (gSSR) and EST (EST-SSR) melon sequences, all yielding polymorphic bands in melon germplasm, except one that was polymorphic only in Cucurbita species. A similar polymorphism level was found among EST-SSRs and gSSRs, between dimeric and trimeric EST-SSRs, and between EST-SSRs placed in the open reading frame or any of the 5′- or 3′-untranslated regions. Correlation between SSR length and polymorphism was only found for dinucleotide EST-SSRs located within the untranslated regions, but not for trinucleotide EST-SSRs. Transferability of EST-SSRs to Cucurbita species was assayed and 12.7% of the primer pairs amplified at least in one species, although only 5.4% were polymorphic. A set of 14 double haploid lines from the cross between the cultivar “Piel de Sapo” and the accession PI161375 were selected for the bin mapping approach in melon. One hundred and twenty-one SSR markers were newly mapped. The position of 46 SSR loci was also verified by genotyping the complete population. A final bin-map was constructed including 80 RFLPs, 212 SSRs, 3 SNPs and the Nsv locus, distributed in 122 bins with an average bin length of 10.2 cM and a maximum bin length of 33 cM. Map density was 4.2 cM/marker or 5.9 cM/SSR. Electronic supplementary material  The online version of this article (doi:) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.     

<Emphasis Type="Italic">Prunus</Emphasis> microsatellite marker transferability across rosaceous crops

A total of 145 microsatellite primer pairs from Prunus DNA sequences were studied for transferability in a set of eight cultivars from nine rosaceous species (almond, peach, apricot, Japanese plum, European plum, cherry, apple, pear, and strawberry), 25 each of almond genomic, peach genomic, peach expressed sequence tags (EST), and Japanese plum genomic, 22 of almond EST, and 23 of apricot (13 EST and 10 genomic), all known to produce single-locus and polymorphic simple-sequence repeats in the species where they were developed. Most primer pairs (83.6%) amplified bands of the expected size range in other Prunus. Transferability, i.e., the proportion of microsatellites that amplified and were polymorphic, was also high in Prunus (63.9%). Almond and Japanese plum were the most variable among the diploid species (all but the hexaploid European plum) and peach the least polymorphic. Thirty-one microsatellites amplified and were polymorphic in all Prunus species studied, 12 of which, covering its whole genome, are proposed as the “universal Prunus set”. In contrast, only 16.3% were transferable in species of other Rosaceae genera (apple, pear, and strawberry). Polymorphic Prunus microsatellites also detected lower levels of variability in the non-congeneric species. No significant differences were detected in transferability and the ability to detect variability between microsatellites of EST and genomic origin.     

Development of expressed sequence tag-derived microsatellite markers for <Emphasis Type="Italic">Saccharina</Emphasis> (<Emphasis Type="Italic">Laminaria</Emphasis>) <Emphasis Type="Italic">japonica</Emphasis>

Expressed sequence tag-derived microsatellite markers (EST-SSR) were generated and characterized in Laminaria japonica using data mining from updated public EST databases and polymorphism testing. Fifty-eight of 578 ESTs (10.0%) containing various repeat motifs were used to design polymerase chain reaction (PCR) amplification primers. A total of 12 pairs of primer were generated and used in the PCR amplification. Alleles per locus ranged from two to ten (average of 5.7). The observed heterozygosities and expected heterozygosities were from 0.045 to 0.543 and from 0.056 to 0.814, respectively. All loci were in Hardy–Weinberg equilibrium and no linkage disequilibrium was detected. These robust, informative, and potentially transferable polymorphic markers appear suitable for population, genetic, parentage, and mapping studies of L. japonica.