Expressed sequence tags from the halophyte Limonium sinense.

Halophytes can grow under a high salinity condition. Similar to glycophytes, their salt-tolerance possesses a high genetic complexity. There are many morphological and physiological studies on halophytes but very little information is at molecular level why they are salt-tolerant. Limonium sinense is a salt-secreting halophyte and can excretes salts by multi-cellular glands. Here, we report the library construction and sequence analysis of a cDNA library made from leaf tissue of L. sinenes. Among those 1082 expressed sequence tag (EST) obtained, 684 unique genes were identified: 429 showed homology to previously identified genes, 255 matched to uncharacterized genes. Compared with other EST databases, some characteristic features such as abundance genes in related to cytoskeleton and intracellular traffic, membrane transporting were observed, which may be specific to halophytes.