Gene expression profiling of Haematococcus pluvialis

초록

Expressed sequence tags (ESTs) generated based on characterization of clones isolated randomly from cDNA libraries were used to study gene expression profiles in specific cells and to provide useful information for characterizing cell physiology. In this study, we generated expressed sequence tags (ESTs) from a library constructed from astaxanthin induced Haematococcus pluvialis. Partial sequences were obtained from the 5' ends of 1858 individual cDNAs, which could be grouped into 1004 non-overlapping sequences. Of these, 752 sequences were singletons, while the remainder fell into 252 clusters. Approximately 79% of the EST sequences showed similarity to previously described sequences in public databases. H. pluvialis consisted of a relatively high percentage of genes involved genetic information processing (19%) and metabolism (14%) and a relatively low percentage of sequences in cellular process (4.0%), defense or stress resistance (3%) and environmental information process (3%). A relatively large fraction of H. pluvialis sequences was classified as genes involved in photosynthesis (9%), structure (9%) and signal transduction (8%). This work is one of the first efforts to profile gene expression in a H. pluvialis. We will perform cDNA microarray analysis to isolate cDNA clones related to astaxanthin biosynthesis and to study their functional roles.