Analysis of expressed sequence tags (ESTs) from sorghum bicolor germinating embryos

by 1977- Reid, St Patrick

Sorghum is a major source of nutrition in developing countries. Additionally, among cereal grains sorghum has one of the smallest genomes, making it an excellent model system for cereal grains. In this study an Expressed Sequence Tag (EST) database from Sorghum bicolor embryos germinated for a period of 24 hr was constructed. Highthroughput sequencing produced a total of 5,405 and 5,126 ESTs from the 5? and 3? ends of the cDNA clones respectively. High-throughput bioinformatic analysis revealed that although a small percentage of contamination was observed most of the ESTs were derived from the cDNA library. Although expression analysis offered insight into the numerous processes taking place in the germinating embryo, a great majority of the ESTs were not able to be identified by BLAST searches. The results indicate that many of the embryo ESTs is not represented in the public database.