Genes Galore: A Summary of Methods for Accessing Results from Large-Scale Partial Sequencing of Anonymous Arabidopsis cDNA Clones

High-throughput automated partial sequencing of anonymous cDNA clones provides a method to survey the repertoire of expressed genes from an organism. Comparison of the coding capacity of these expressed sequence tags (ESTs) with the sequences in the public data bases results in assignment of putative function to a significant proportion of the ESTs. Thus, the more than 13,400 plant ESTs that are currently available provide a new resource that will facilitate progress in many areas of plant biology. These opportunities are illustrated by a description of the results obtained from analysis of 1500 Arabidopsis ESTs from a cDNA library prepared from equal portions of poly(A+) mRNA from etiolated seedlings, roots, leaves, and flowering inflorescences. More than 900 different sequences were represented, 32% of which showed significant nucleotide or deduced amino acid sequences similarity to previously characterized genes or proteins from a wide range of organisms. At least 165 of the clones had significant deduced amino acid sequence homology to proteins or gene products that have not been previously characterized from higher plants. A summary of methods for accessing the information and materials generated by the Arabidopsis cDNA sequencing project is provided.