Abstract

GONZALEZ ALMARIO, CAROLINA  and  LOPEZ CARRASCAL, CAMILO E. CONSTRUCCIÓN DE UNA LIBRERÍA DE ADNc EN YUCA: UNA HERRAMIENTA PARA EL DESARROLLO BIOTECNOLÓGICO DEL CULTIVO. Acta biol.Colomb. [online]. 2008, vol.13, n.2, pp.189-202. ISSN 0120-548X.

Cassava is one of the most important crops for global food security and provides food and livelihood for 600 million people in the developing world. It is also good source of starch, with levels between 73.7 y 84.9% of total dry weight in roots (FAO, 2007). Cassava starch can be used in a wide range of industries (textile, cosmetic, nourishing, etc) and it has a high potential for the production of biofuel. Cassava bacterial blight, caused by Xanthomonas axonopodis pv. manihotis (Xam), is one of the most important diseases that affects cassava. This disease can compromise the starch supply not only for bioetanol production but also affect global food security. The long reproductive cycle, high heterozigosity and tetraploid character of cassava are characteristics that have complicated the genetic breeding for this crop. For these reasons new alternatives based on biotechnology are necessary to accelerate its improvement. In the postgenomic era many experiments rely on the availability of transcript sequences for cloning. As these clones usually originate from cDNA libraries, the quality of these libraries is crucial. In this article we report the construction of the first cassava cDNA library employing the Gateway® system. For this, in vitro grown plants were inoculated with the Xam strain CIO151. The expression library shows a high titer of 1 x 10⁷ cfu/ml, with inserts ranging between 600 and 1500 bp. The sequence analyses from 14 random clones confirmed that these are expressed genes and showed similarity with previously cloned genes from species related to cassava. This library is an excellent resource for the identification of novel genes and for functional studies through the identification of their interactions with other proteins.

Keywords : Gateway®; Cassava; cassava bacterial blight; expressed genes; cDNA library; Gateway®.

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