Expressed sequence tags-based identification of genes in the biocontrol agent <Emphasis Type="Italic">Chaetomium cupreum</Emphasis>

Chaetomium cupreum has a potential as biocontrol agent against a range of plant pathogens on the basis of production of antifungal metabolites, mycoparasitism, competition for space and nutrients, or various combinations of these. To explore genes expressed in C. cupreum, a cDNA library was constructed from mycelium and 3,066 expressed sequence tags (ESTs) were generated. Clusters analysis enabled the identification of 1,471 unigenes with 392 contigs and 1,079 singleton sequences. Putative functions were assigned to 874 unigenes that exhibited strong similarity to genes/ESTs in public databases putatively containing genes involved in cellular component, molecular function, and biological process. Other 597 ESTs representing novel genes showed no significant similarity to public database resource of NCBI. A proportion of genes was identified related to degradation of pathogen cell wall, antifungal metabolite production, as was estimated in the biocontrol fungus. The paper described is a first step towards the knowledge of the C. cupreum genome. The results present the useful application of EST analysis on C. cupreum and provide a preliminary indication of gene expression putatively involved in biocontrol.     

Expressed sequence tag analysis of the soybean rust pathogen Phakopsora pachyrhizi

Soybean rust is caused by the obligate fungal pathogen Phakopsora pachyrhizi Sydow. A unidirectional cDNA library was constructed using mRNA isolated from germinating P. pachyrhizi urediniospores to identify genes expressed at this physiological stage. Single pass sequence analysis of 908 clones revealed 488 unique expressed sequence tags (ESTs, unigenes) of which 107 appeared as multiple copies. BLASTX analysis identified 189 unigenes with significant similarities (Evalue<10(-5)) to sequences deposited in the NCBI non-redundant protein database. A search against the NCBI dbEST using the BLASTN algorithm revealed 32 ESTs with high or moderate similarities to plant and fungal sequences. Using the Expressed Gene Anatomy Classification, 31.7% of these ESTs were involved in primary metabolism, 14.3% in gene/protein expression, 7.4% in cell structure and growth, 6.9% in cell division, 4.8% in cell signaling/cell communication, and 4.8% in cell/organism defense. Approximately 29.6% of the identities were to hypothetical proteins and proteins with unknown function.     

Comparative analysis of sequences expressed during the liquid-cultured mycelia and fruit body stages of Pleurotus ostreatus

To characterize genes involved in fruit body development, two complementary DNA (cDNA) libraries were constructed from RNA isolated from liquid-cultured mycelia and fruit bodies of Pleurotus ostreatus. Using single-pass sequencing of cDNA clones, 952 and 1069 expressed sequence tags (ESTs) were generated from liquid-cultured mycelia and fruit body cDNA library, respectively. A BLASTX search revealed that 390 of the liquid-cultured mycelia ESTs (41%) and 531 of the fruit body ESTs (50%) showed significant similarity to protein sequences described in the nonredudant database (E values < or =1 x 10(-5)). When liquid-cultured mycelia and fruit body ESTs were compared by the SeqMan II program, among the total of 2021 ESTs, 1256 ESTs were unigenes, and 66 unigenes (5.3%) were commonly expressed during both stages. The functional catalogs of the ESTs were made by comparison with functionally identified Saccharomyces cerevisiae genes. Liquid-cultured mycelium ESTs were compared with fruit body ESTs and changes of the expressed genes during fruit body development were analyzed.     

Identification and analysis of expressed sequence tags present in xylem tissues of kelampayan (Neolamarckia cadamba (Roxb.) Bosser)

The large-scale genomic resource for kelampayan was generated from a developing xylem cDNA library. A total of 6,622 high quality expressed sequence tags (ESTs) were generated through high-throughput 5’ EST sequencing of cDNA clones. The ESTs were analyzed and assembled to generate 4,728 xylogenesis unigenes distributed in 2,100 contigs and 2,628 singletons. About 59.3 % of the ESTs were assigned with putative identifications whereas 40.7 % of the sequences showed no significant similarity to any sequences in GenBank. Interestingly, most genes involved in lignin biosynthesis and several other cell wall biosynthesis genes were identified in the kelampayan EST database. The identified genes in this study will be candidates for functional genomics and association genetic studies in kelampayan aiming at the production of high value forests.     

Large-scale identification of expressed sequence tags involved in rice and rice blast fungus interaction

To better understand the molecular basis of the defense response against the rice blast fungus (Magnaporthe grisea), a large-scale expressed sequence tag (EST) sequencing approach was used to identify genes involved in the early infection stages in rice (Oryza sativa). Six cDNA libraries were constructed using infected leaf tissues harvested from 6 conditions: resistant, partially resistant, and susceptible reactions at both 6 and 24 h after inoculation. Two additional libraries were constructed using uninoculated leaves and leaves from the lesion mimic mutant spl11. A total of 68,920 ESTs were generated from 8 libraries. Clustering and assembly analyses resulted in 13,570 unique sequences from 10,934 contigs and 2,636 singletons. Gene function classification showed that 42% of the ESTs were predicted to have putative gene function. Comparison of the pathogen-challenged libraries with the uninoculated control library revealed an increase in the percentage of genes in the functional categories of defense and signal transduction mechanisms and cell cycle control, cell division, and chromosome partitioning. In addition, hierarchical clustering analysis grouped the eight libraries based on their disease reactions. A total of 7,748 new and unique ESTs were identified from our collection compared with the KOME full-length cDNA collection. Interestingly, we found that rice ESTs are more closely related to sorghum (Sorghum bicolor) ESTs than to barley (Hordeum vulgare), wheat (Triticum aestivum), and maize (Zea mays) ESTs. The large cataloged collection of rice ESTs in this study provides a solid foundation for further characterization of the rice defense response and is a useful public genomic resource for rice functional genomics studies.     

Construction and profiling of a cDNA library from young fruit of satsuma mandarin

To profile gene expression in the early stage of fruit development from ‘Nichinan No. 1’ satsuma mandarin (Citrus unshiu Marc.), we isolated total mRNA at 30 d after flowering. A cDNA library was prepared from mature mRNAs and a total of 2350 cDNA clones were partially sequenced. In all, 1914 ESTs were acquired after the removal of the vector sequence and filtering over a minimum length of 150 nucleotides. A total of 763 unigenes, consisting of 138 contigs and 625 singletons, was identified after assembly of those ESTs. According to our homology search with BLASTX against the NCBI database, the deduced amino acid sequences of 253 unigenes were homologous to proteins with known function and 242 unigenes were significantly matched to proteins with putative or unknown functions. The remaining 268 showed no significant similarity to any protein sequences found in the public database with matches higher than an E value of 10^-5. The 253 unigenes matched to proteins with known function were then manually assigned to 10 cellular functional categories using a modified MIPS MATDB classification. The expression level of each gene was analyzed based on the redundancy of cDNA clones in each contig that comprised more than 10 ESTs. Here, the most abundant gene expressed in young fruits was for a chitinase precursor. A miraculin-like protein and a lectin-related protein precursor were also abundant.     

白叶枯病菌胁迫下云南普通野生稻SSH文库的构建及抗病相关基因分析

以云南普通野生稻为材料,利用抑制差减杂交技术（SSH）,构建了白叶枯病菌胁迫的云南普通野生稻特异表达基因的差减文库.通过对文库所有阳性单克隆进行测序,聚类分析后共获得494条高质量的表达序列标签（EST）.经过BlastN分析,有417条与已知功能的序列有较高同源性;经BlastX分析,有104条EST与未知功能蛋白或假定蛋白有较高相似性,49条EST未能找到同源匹配,341条EST与已知功能蛋白有较高同源性.初步分析发现,这些基因主要涉及能量代谢、蛋白质代谢、核酸代谢、防御与抗逆应答反应、信号转导、光合作用及膜运输等代谢过程.使用半定量RT-PCR研究了7个可能与白叶枯病抗性相关的EST序列在云南普通野生稻对照和白叶枯病菌处理的叶片中的表达情况,并获得这些基因的表达谱.结果发现,克隆编号为OR7,OR68和OR826的EST受白叶枯病菌胁迫诱导上调表达,其中OR826 EST在蛋白数据库中无同源序列,可能是一类新的白叶枯病抗性基因,而组成型表达的OR143 EST在对照和接菌处理的叶片中均能检测到其mRNA的表达,但其表达量在白叶枯病菌胁迫48 h后逐渐增强,推测这些基因直接参与了云南普通野生稻抗病防御反应.本研究为从云南普通野生稻中发掘和克隆新的白叶枯病抗性基因提供了理论依据,为进一步研究云南普通野生稻抗白叶枯病的分子机制奠定了基础.     

Comparative study of genes expressed from rice fungus-resistant and susceptible lines during interactions with Magnaporthe oryzae

Rice blast disease caused by Magnaporthe oryzae is the most important fungal disease of rice. To understand the molecular basis of interaction between the fungus and rice, we constructed a cDNA library from a rice-resistant line inoculated with M. oryzae. One hundred and fifty-three cDNA clones were sequence analyzed, of which 129 exhibited significant nucleotide sequence homology to known genes, 21 were homologous to unknown genes, while three clones did not match to any database. However, these three unmatched clones showed sequence homology at protein level in the protein databases and one of them encoded a disease resistance-related protein kinase and was abundant in the EST collection. Northern analysis showed that this disease resistance-related protein kinase gene was induced by inoculation and only expressed in the rice-resistant, but not susceptible, lines. Southern analysis showed that this gene was present in a single copy in the rice genome and co-segregated with the M. oryzae resistance in the cross of the resistant and susceptible lines. This study illustrates that sequencing of ESTs from inoculated resistant plants can reveal genes responsive to pathogen infection, which could help understand plant defense mechanisms.     

木榄幼苗叶片cDNA文库的构建及其表达序列标签分析

应用SMART技术构建了25‰盐度下生长4个月的木榄叶片的cDNA文库,文库滴度为10~6 cfu mL~(-1),重组率为94.4%,插入片断长度为1～2 kb.从cDNA文库中随机挑选了96个重组克隆进行序列分析,共获得94个表达序列标签(ESTs),经质量控制和聚类拼接后得到81个unigenes,包括5个片断聚合群和76个单一序列.Blastx分析结果表明这些unigencs与GenBank的Nr数据库中已报道的基因具有较高的同源性(E<10~(-5)),它们参与呼吸代谢、光合作用、糖代谢、氨基酸代谢、脂肪酸代谢以及不饱和脂肪酸生物合成等重要的生理过程,并与机体的损伤修复、胞吞作用以及PPAR信号途径等相关.     

Construction and characterization of a cDNA library from floral organs and fruitlets of <Emphasis Type="Italic">Citrus reticulata</Emphasis>

To explore and isolate genes related to flowering and fruit development, we constructed a cDNA library from floral organs and fruitlets of Ponkan mandarin (Citrus reticulata Blanco). A total of 661 high-quality expressed sequence tags (ESTs) were generated and submitted to GenBank with the accession numbers from GO343532 to GO344192. All these ESTs were assembled into 43 contigs and 296 singletons (totally 339 unigenes). The BLAST2GO software was employed to annotate the unigenes, among which 77 ones had no significant homology with the sequences in NCBI non-redundant proteins database by BLASTX analysis. Additionally, gene ontology (GO) analysis revealed an overview of sequences distribution, which implied some specially expressed genes related to flower and fruit development. Furthermore, some abundantly expressed unigenes involved in several crucial metabolic pathways related to fruit quality were highlighted and three types of homologues of miraculin-like protein2 were analyzed by both semiquantitative RT-PCR and real-time PCR. The results showed different expression profiles of these genes, which meant that they contribute distinctly to fruit development.     

CHARACTERIZATION OF EXPRESSED SEQUENCE TAGS GENERATED FROM SKIN CDNA CLONES OF Equus caballus BY SINGLE PASS SEQUENCING

A cDNA library was built using RNA extracted from the skin tissue of an adult horse. The library was primed with oligo (dT) and sequences were directionally inserted in order to produce an expression library. The library has 5.8X 10⁵ plaque forming units with 99.6% recombinant phage. The average insert size is 1.3 Kbp. Three hundred and thirteen expressed sequence tags (ESTs) were generated from sequencing of the 5 prime end of randomly selected skin cDNA clones. The ESTs were sequenced on an ABI 377 using Big-Dye chemistry. A similarity search was performed on each EST using the NCBI non-redundant protein database and 206 ESTs were putatively identified. Twenty six percent of the identified ESTs were redundant. The ESTs were categorized by function. The most frequently identified functional class was translational proteins.     

Variability of gene expression profiles in human blood and lymphoblastoid cell lines

Background

Infection of plants by pathogens and the subsequent disease development involves substantial changes in the biochemistry and physiology of both partners. Analysis of genes that are expressed during these interactions represents a powerful strategy to obtain insights into the molecular events underlying these changes. We have employed expressed sequence tag (EST) analysis to identify rice genes involved in defense responses against infection by the blast fungus Magnaporthe oryzae and fungal genes involved in infectious growth within the host during a compatible interaction.

Results

A cDNA library was constructed with RNA from rice leaves (Oryza sativa cv. Hwacheong) infected with M. oryzae strain KJ201. To enrich for fungal genes, subtraction library using PCR-based suppression subtractive hybridization was constructed with RNA from infected rice leaves as a tester and that from uninfected rice leaves as the driver. A total of 4,148 clones from two libraries were sequenced to generate 2,302 non-redundant ESTs. Of these, 712 and 1,562 ESTs could be identified to encode fungal and rice genes, respectively. To predict gene function, Gene Ontology (GO) analysis was applied, with 31% and 32% of rice and fungal ESTs being assigned to GO terms, respectively. One hundred uniESTs were found to be specific to fungal infection EST. More than 80 full-length fungal cDNA sequences were used to validate ab initio annotated gene model of M. oryzae genome sequence.

Conclusion

This study shows the power of ESTs to refine genome annotation and functional characterization. Results of this work have advanced our understanding of the molecular mechanisms underpinning fungal-plant interactions and formed the basis for new hypothesis.     

Comparative analysis of expressed sequence tags (ESTs) from Triticum monococcum shoot apical meristem at vegetative and reproductive stages

Triticum monococcum has recently drawn the attention of biologists to discover and utilize novel genes and alleles. To explore the molecular features of the genetic network governing floral transition in shoot apical meristem (SAM) of spring growth habit T. monococcum, two expressed sequence tag (EST) libraries containing 3,031 ESTs from vegetative SAM (VS) and 2,647 ESTs from early reproductive SAM (RS) were analyzed. Assembly of ESTs resulted in 2,303 unigenes for VS library (368 contigs and 1,935 singletons) and 1,890 unigenes (337 contigs and 1,553 singletons) for RS library. The 67.05 % of VS unigenes and 66.30 % of RS unigenes showed significant similarity with genes of known, putative and or unknown function, whereas the remaining 32.95 % of the VS unigenes and 33.7 % of RS unigenes displayed no significant match with the public protein database. The 1,064 and 866 unigenes of VS and RS libraries were assigned to functional categories using Pageman ontology tool. Further analysis revealed that the switch from VS to RS caused significant changes in the abundance of unigenes assigned to some functional categories. A total of 37 genes were identified which were significantly differentially expressed between vegetative and reproductive stages of T. monococcum SAM. Investigation of the differentially expressed genes revealed the importance of the genes involved in energy metabolism, ubiquitin/26S proteasome system, polyamines biosynthesis and signaling of reactive oxygen species in SAM differentiation towards floral transition in T. monococcum.     

日本通草蛉cDNA文库构建及部分ESTs分析

本研究以日本通草蛉Chrysoperla nipponensis (Okamoto)为材料,采用Oligo(dT)引物定向克隆构建cDNA文库并进行EST序列测定,旨在以基因库的形式进行种质资源的保存,为其遗传改良奠定基础,并为探讨其分类地位提供分子依据。对该文库质量分析表明：库容量为1.0×10⁶,重组率为80.0％,平均插入片段为512 bp。测序后最终成功得到323条表达序列标签（expressed sequence tags,ESTs）序列,经Phrap程序聚类拼接后得到236条单基因簇（unigene）,包括86个重叠群（congtigs）和150个单拷贝（singlets）。使用NCBI中的BlastN和BlastX程序对236条ESTs进行本地化搜索,BlastN的结果表明：180条ESTs（76.3%）没有注解,56条ESTs（23.7%）与GenBank上公布的序列有较高的同源性,其中一条序列被确定为该种的16S rRNA基因,利用MEGA软件构建了基于该16S rRNA序列草蛉科的系统发育树,结果显示通草蛉属Chrysoperla与叉草蛉属Dichochrysa、玛草蛉属Mallada、草蛉属Chrysopa的亲缘关系比较近,这与传统分类相吻合。BlastX的比对结果为197条ESTs（83.5%）有功能注解,39条ESTs（16.5%）无注解或score值小于100。使用GO(gene ontology)数据库对236条ESTs序列进行功能注释,结果表明：142条ESTs（59.7％）有注解,并表达出40多种基因产物。