August 15, 2002

We are pleased to announce that today the Compositae Genome Project (CGP) publicly released  about 66,000 lettuce and about 45,000 sunflower annotated EST sequences.

These can be accessed through http://compgenomics.ucdavis.edu (or through NCBI in the next few days).

The CGP is funded through the USDA IFAFS program.

BACKGROUNDER

Comparative Genomics of Domestication Traits in Lettuce and Sunflower
Website: http://compgenomics.ucdavis.edu/index.htm
Richard Michelmore, Kent J. Bradford and Louise E. Jackson - University of California Davis
Steven Knapp - Oregon State University
Loren H. Rieseberg - Indiana University
Richard V. Kesseli - University of Massachusetts

Sunflower (Helianthus annuus) and lettuce (Lactuca sativa) are economically-important members of the Compositae, an ecologically successful and genetically diverse family. We will develop permanent resources for functional and comparative genomics of lettuce and sunflower. This consortium will capitalize on the wealth of knowledge being developed for Arabidopsis.

Wild and domesticated forms of lettuce and sunflower are dramatically different. The lack of information on the genetic basis of these differences and their linkage relationships has slowed introgression of useful traits from wild germplasm. We will study the genes underlying agriculturally important, qualitative and quantitative traits by conducting parallel genetic analyses on lettuce and sunflower to dissect the genetic basis of traits that distinguish domesticated from wild forms of lettuce and sunflower.

We will (i) generate an extensive expressed sequence tag (EST) databases from two different genotypes each of lettuce and sunflower (~80,000 total), (ii) determine the extent of synteny among sunflower, lettuce and Arabidopsis by mapping known sequences in lettuce and sunflower and by comparison to the genomic sequence of Arabidopsis, (iii) conduct quantitative trait locus (QTL) and candidate gene analyses of domestication traits, and (iv) develop a genetic approach to the control of expression levels of candidate genes.

We will determine the genetic bases and linkage relationships of metabolic and morphological changes associated with domestication. This will allow the development of PCR-based markers for high-throughput genetic analyses. It will show the extent of synteny between the two major divisions within the Compositae and with Arabidopsis for sequenced genes and QTLs.