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Mol Biol Rep (2012) 39:62896296 DOI 10.1007/s11033-012-1450-1
Analysis of 2,297 expressed sequence tags (ESTs) from a cDNA library of ax (Linum ustitatissimum L.) bark tissue
Song-Hua Long Xin Deng Yu-Fu Wang Xiang Li
Rui-Qing Qiao Cai-Sheng Qiu Yuan Guo
Dong-Mei Hao Wan-Qi Jia Xin-Bo Chen
Received: 16 September 2011 / Accepted: 23 January 2012 / Published online: 1 February 2012 Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2012
Abstracts Bast bre crops are the second most important natural bre crops following cotton. Of these, ax (Linum ustitatissimum L.) is the most widely planted in the world, with its bre used for high quality linen textile. A cDNA library of ax bark tissues was constructed with the purpose of identifying genes involved in the Bast bre development. A total of 2,297 unigene sequences were obtained from 3,200 randomly selected clones of the cDNA library. These sequences were grouped into 155 clusters and 2,142 singletons, which have been submitted to the GenBank databases. By putative functional annotation, 23.3% of these sequences were similar to known proteins in GenBank,44.0% of these sequences were similar to unknown proteins, and 32.7% of these sequences showed no signicant similarity to any other protein sequences in existing databases. Classied by the Gene Ontology, 24.8, 23.1 and 14.3% were assigned to molecular function, biological process, and cellular component GO terms, respectively. By further bioinformatics approaches, about 110 ESTs matched cell wall related genes in the MAIZEWALL database, representing 16 functional categories of all 19 categories, of
which, the most abundant category was protein synthesis. Based on the PlantTFDB database, 39 of the 64 transcription factor families in the Arabidopsis thaliana genome were identied as being involved in ax cell wall formation. The sequences and bioinformatics analysis data generated in this paper will be useful for gene expression, cloning and genetic engineering studies to characterize bast bre development and improve the properties of the bast bres.
Keywords Bark Bioinformatics Cell wall EST Flax
Introduction
Bast bre is an important source of cellulose-rich natural bre and has attracted human attention since the beginning of agriculture [1]. This is due in part to the unusual properties of the bast (i.e. phloem) bre, such as great length and high tensile strength. Flax bre has more suitable quality for clothing than...