|
| |
|
Bee brain EST project
|
| To accelerate the molecular analysis of behavior in the honey bee (Apis mellifera), we created an expressed sequence tag (EST) resource for the bee brain. Bees of different ages performing a wide variety of natural behaviors were collected from a field colony at the University of Illinois. Brains were then dissected and mRNA extracted. A normalized unidirectional cDNA library was made in the laboratory of Prof. Bento Soares, University of Iowa. The library was subsequently subtracted. Over 20,000 cDNA clones were partially sequenced from the normalized and subtracted libraries at the Keck Center, resulting in 15,311 vector-trimmed, high-quality, sequences with an average read length of 494 bp. and average base-quality of 41. These sequences were assembled into 8966 putatively unique sequences, which were tested for similarity to sequences in the public databases with a variety of BLAST searches. Apis ESTs were tentatively assigned molecular function and biological process using the Gene Ontology (GO) classification system.
The University of Illinois Bee-ESTdb integrates data from the bee brain EST sequencing project with data from sequencing and gene research projects from other organisms, primarily the fruit fly
Drosophila melanogaster. The goal of Bee-ESTdb is to provide updated information on the genes of the honey bee, currently using annotation primarily from flies to suggest cellular roles, biological functions, and evolutionary relationships. All data in this database are freely available. The Clemson University Genomics Institute is the distributor of these public domain cDNA clones. For information on how to purchase an individual clone or the entire collection, please contact www.genome.clemson.edu/orders/ or generobi@life.uiuc.edu.
A paper describing this project
has been published as the cover story in
Genome Research in 2002.
|
| Representative Publications
Whitfield CW, Band MR, Bonaldo MF, Kumar CG, Liu L, Pardinas JR, Robertson HM, Soares MB, Robinson GE (2002) Annotated expressed sequence tages and cDNA microarrays for studies of brain and behavior in the honey bee. Genome Research 4:555-566.
(pdf)
Updated 01/18/05 |
 |
|
