Plant Tissue Cult. & Biotech. 15(2): 145-156, 2005 (December)

Preliminary Progress in Jute (Corchorus species) Genome Analysis

Ahmad S. Islam, Matthew Taliaferro, Christopher T. Lee, Craig Ingram, Rebecca J. Montalvo, Gerrit van der Ende, Shahabudin Alam, Javed Siddiqui and Kanagasabapathi Sathasivan

Molecular Cell and Developmental Biology, School of Biological Sciences, The University of Texas at Austin, USA

Key words: Genomic DNA, C. olitorius, C. capsularis , WU-BLAST, TAIR, 18S rRNA, tRNA-Leu

Abastract

The paper summarizes the progress made in cloning and sequencing a limited number of genes from jute (Corchorus olitorius and C. capsularis) and discusses future applications of jute genome analysis. As of December 2005, slightly over 200 DNA sequences have been deposited in GenBank. Although many of these sequences are partial and uncharacterized, this marks the beginning of a major step in unraveling of the hitherto unknown jute genome. We have constructed both cDNA and genomic DNA libraries for C. olitorius var. O4 and C. capsularis var. CVL-1 in the plasmid vectors pSMART and pBluescript, respectively. Random clones were isolated and sequenced. These DNA sequences have been deposited in GenBank and analyzed using TAIR (www.arabidopsis.org) for similar sequences in Arabidopsis thaliana and other related plant species. The complete sequence for tRNA-Leu and partial sequence of DNA fragments encoding several proteins, such as RNA polymerase ?-subunit-1, 18S rRNA, mitochondrial DNA directed RNA polymerase and carboxytransferase ?-subunit are reported in this paper. The analysis of DNA sequences of related taxa deposited in GenBank is also presented delineating the scope and applications of cloning genes of agronomic importance.

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