Tools for Potato Structural and Functional Genomics

马铃薯是一种世界性的重要作物，也是人类最重要的双子叶食物来源之一。 鉴于晚疫病对全世界马铃薯生产的威胁，研究马铃薯对微生物病原体感染的反应对无害环境的农业生产至关重要。 经过世纪的马铃薯育种努力，已经将来自丰富的野生茄属种质资源的抗性性状引入到病原体易感的栽培物种中。 然而，栽培马铃薯的单一抗病性状的育种可能需要数年时间，病原体迅速进化以克服单一抗性性状。马铃薯育种者需要更多的信息和遗传资源，以应对不断变化的病原体种群的挑战。遗传研究已经确定了野生茄属物种中未开发的病原体抗性性状。 越来越多的证据表明，野生马铃薯基因组的区域可能包含对几种不同病原体的抗性基因座的大簇阵列。 生物技术的最新发展极大地促进了马铃薯的遗传研究，包括基因组测序的最新进展，这使得能够快速收集和分析大量的DNA序列数据。两个野生马铃薯品种的基因组含有许多抗性性状，可作为深层细菌人工染色体（BAC）文库。这些重要区域的基因组序列将被确定，允许种间比较以及等位基因特异性分子标记的发展，可用于研究人员使用标记辅助选择的理想性状的基因渗入。 另一种广泛使用的方法是产生表达序列标签（EST）。 这些随机选择的短序列是鉴定组织中表达的大量基因的非常经济有效的方式。该奖项支持：（1）携带致病疫霉抗性的抗病（R）基因和数量性状基因座（QTL）的野生马铃薯基因组区域的鉴定、分离和测序。 这些重要区域的基因组序列将被确定、注释、相互比较并公开提供。 这些序列将有助于克隆对抗晚疫病的重要抗性基因和其他性状，提供容易地从其他野生茄属基因组中分离和表征功能相似区域以对抗晚疫病的工具，并提供进化研究的底物;（2）从各种马铃薯组织和从疾病攻击的组织产生55，000个EST，以构建注释的，公开可用的马铃薯基因索引和建立马铃薯表达序列标签（EST）数据库，包括在响应晚疫病病原体感染期间表达的序列;（3）选择特异性EST序列，构建马铃薯cDNA微阵列，用于全基因组分析，研究马铃薯对病原菌侵染的应答和其它植物过程;（4）完善马铃薯和番茄之间的同线关系，并将这两个基因组之间的连锁建立在正向序列上，正向序列也锚定在拟南芥基因组中。 将向科学界提供工具和信息，用于研究晚疫病，并将提供与调查其他病原体疾病和关键植物过程有关的材料和信息。

Potato is a crop of worldwide importance and one of the most important dicotyledonous sources of food for humans. In light of threats to worldwide potato production by late blight, research on the plant's response to infection by microbial pathogens will be critical to environmentally sound agricultural production. A century of breeding efforts in potato have resulted in the introduction of resistance traits from abundant wild Solanum germplasm collections to pathogen susceptible cultivated species. However, breeding of cultivated potato for a single disease resistance trait can take years and pathogens rapidly evolve to overcome single resistance traits. Potato breeders are in need of additional information and genetic resources to compete with the challenges of ever changing pathogen populations. Genetic studies have identified untapped pathogen resistance traits in wild Solanum species. Accumulating evidence suggests that regions of wild potato genomes may contain large clustered arrays of resistance loci to several different pathogens. Recent developments in biotechnology have greatly facilitated genetic research in potato, including recent advances in genomic sequencing which allow for the rapid collection and analysis of vast amounts of DNA sequence data. The genomes of two wild potato species containing many resistance traits are available as deep bacterial artificial chromosome (BAC) libraries. The genomic sequences of these important regions will be determined, allowing interspecific comparisons as well as the development of allele-specific molecular markers that can be used by researchers for introgression of desirable traits using marker-aided selection. Another widely used approach is the generation of Expressed Sequence Tags (ESTs). These short, randomly selected sequences are a very cost effective way of identifying a large number of genes expressed in a tissue. This award supports: (1) Identification, isolation and sequencing of regions of wild potato genomes bearing disease resistance (R) genes and quantitative trait loci (QTLs) for P. infestans resistance. The genome sequences of these important regions will be determined, annotated, compared to each other and made publicly available. These sequences will facilitate the cloning of the significant resistance genes and other traits to combat late blight disease, provide tools to readily isolate and characterize functionally similar regions from other wild Solanum genomes to combat late blight, and provide substrates for evolutionary studies; (2) Generation of 55,000 ESTs from a variety of potato tissues and from disease-challenged tissues, to construct an annotated, publicly available Potato Gene Index and establishment of a potato Expressed Sequence Tag (EST) database including sequences expressed during response to late blight pathogen infection; (3) Specific ESTs will be selected and arrayed to fabricate potato cDNA microarrays, and used for genome-wide analyses during responses to pathogen infection and other plant processes; (4) Refinement of the syntenic relationship between potato and tomato and to base the linkage between these two genomes on orthologous sequences, which are also being anchored in the Arabidopsis genome. Tools and information will be made available to the scientific community for studies on late blight disease and will provide materials and information pertinent to the investigation of other pathogen diseases and critical plant processes.