EST Sequencing
Also see: Shotgun Sequencing | BAC-by-BAC Sequencing
There have been many debates on how to access the essential sequence
information of large plant and animal genomes. A relatively straightforward approach is to isolate mRNA from
different tissues at different ages and sequence single reads of cDNAs, also
called Expressed-Sequence-Tags or ESTs. While this approach leads to
the discovery of genes and their relative expression levels, it lacks genome
positional information and the gene-flanking regions containing regulatory
sequences are also absent. Furthermore, the actual number of genes in
the genome remains elusive since duplicated of genes that have not diverged
significantly may have indistinguishable transcripts; while those genes that
are expressed in only a few cells and at low levels
may be underrepresented. ESTs from several plants, including maize, have been
sequenced. MaizeGDB
maintains a web searchable repository for maize ESTs (and other maize
related information). Likewise, EST collections from several plant
and animal species can be accessed through the
The National Center for Biotechnology
Information (NCBI). The following are a few EST links - this list
is by no means comprehensive, nor endorsed.
EST LINKS:
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