title: Analysis of expressed sequence tags from calcifying cells of marine coccolithophorid (Emiliania huxleyi).
abstract: An expressed sequence tag (EST) approach was used to investigate gene expression in the unicelluar marine alga Emiliania huxleyi. We randomly selected 3000 EST sequences from a cDNA library of transcripts expressed under conditions promoting coccolithogenesis. Cluster analysis and contig assembly resulted in a unigene set of approximately 1523 ESTs. Only 36% of the unique sequences exhibited significant homology to sequences in GenBank. Of particular interest were the numerous transcripts with homology to sequences associated with sexual reproduction and calcium homeostasis in other unicellular and multicellular organisms. The majority of ESTs (64%) had little or no significant sequence homology to entries in GenBank, suggesting a potential for further novel gene discovery. The catalog of ESTs reported herein represents a significant increase in the limited sequence information currently available for E. huxleyi and should make the coccolithophorid more accessible to powerful genomics and postgenomics technologies.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biological Sciences, California State University San Marcos, 333 S. Twin Oaks Valley Road, San Marcos, California 92096-0001, USA.
authors.forename: Thomas M
authors.initials: TM
authors.lastname: Wahlund
authors.forename: Ahmad R
authors.initials: AR
authors.lastname: Hadaegh
authors.forename: Robin
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Clark
authors.forename: Binh
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Nguyen
authors.forename: Michael
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Fanelli
authors.forename: Betsy A
authors.initials: BA
authors.lastname: Read
mesh_terms: D001482:Base Composition; D001483:Base Sequence; D002118:Calcium / Q000378:metabolism; D016000:Cluster Analysis; D003062:Codon / Q000235:genetics; D019295:Computational Biology; D056890:Eukaryota / Q000235:genetics* / Q000378:metabolism; D020224:Expressed Sequence Tags; D015723:Gene Library; D023281:Genomics; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D010839:Phytoplankton / Q000235:genetics* / Q000378:metabolism; D017422:Sequence Analysis, DNA
chemical_list: D003062:Codon; D002118:Calcium