Poster: Genomics Resources

Abs # 945: Pineapple Fruit cDNA Sequencing Project

Presenter:	Botella, Jimmy , j.botella@botany.uq.edu.au
Authors	Botella, Jimmy  (A)   Moyle, Richard  (A)   Ripi, Jonni  (A)   Fairbairn, David  (A)
Affiliations:	(A): University of Queensland

Pineapple (Ananas comosus) is a tropical fruit crop of significant commercial value, yet surprisingly little molecular information exists. A nucleotide database search of Genbank yields only 54 sequence entries for pineapple (as of February 2003). Pineapple fruits are classified as non climacteric according to their ripening characteristics. In contrast with their climacteric counterparts, very little information is available at the molecular level about this important group of fruits. In order to study various aspects of pineapple fruit development by transcript profiling, it is important to first isolate and identify a range of expressed sequences. Thus a small-scale cDNA sequencing project has been initiated to isolate and obtain 5’ sequence data for approximately 1500-2000 cDNA clones from ripening pineapple fruit. We present the results of the sequence analysis, including contig assemblies, clustering and the identification of abundantly transcribed genes. The clones generated in this project will soon be used to produce microarrays and perform detailed studies of the gene expression profiles during pineapple fruit ripening