Combined Sewer Systems: Down, Dirty, and Out of Date

Background: Due to its origin, peanut has a very narrow genetic background. Wild relatives can be a source of genetic variability for cultivated peanut. In this study, the transcriptome of the wild species Arachis stenosperma accession V10309 was analyzed. Results: ESTs were produced from four cDNA libraries of RNAs extracted from leaves and roots of A. stenosperma. Randomly selected cDNA clones were sequenced to generate 8,785 ESTs, of which 6,264 (71.3%) had high quality, with 3,500 clusters: 963 contigs and 2537 singlets. Only 55.9% matched homologous sequences of known genes. ESTs were classified into 23 different categories according to putative protein functions. Numerous sequences related to disease resistance, drought tolerance and human health were identified. Two hundred and six microsatellites were found and markers have been developed for 188 of these. The microsatellite profile was analyzed and compared to other transcribed and genomic sequence data. Conclusion: This is, to date, the first report on the analysis of transcriptome of a wild relative of peanut. The ESTs produced in this study are a valuable resource for gene discovery, the characterization of new wild alleles, and for marker development. The ESTs were released in the [GenBank:EH041934 to EH048197]. Background Peanut or groundnut (Arachis hypogaea L.) is the fourth most important oil seed in the world, cultivated mainly in tropical, subtropical and warm temperate climates [1]. It is an important crop for both human and animal food. Its yields are reduced around the world by diseases including fungal leaf-spots caused by Cercospora arachidicola [Hori] and Phaseoisariopsis personata [Berk. & MA Curtis], the rust Puccinia arachidis [Speg.], groundnut rosette disease, and root-knot nematodes (Meloidogyne ssp.), the later causing losses of up to 12% in United States and India [2]. High Published: 15 February 2007 BMC Plant Biology 2007, 7:7 doi:10.1186/1471-2229-7-7 Received: 7 December 2006 Accepted: 15 February 2007 This article is available from: http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2229/7/7 © 2007 Proite et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.