Establishment of a cDNA library from Bambusa edulis Murno in vitro-grown shoots

An expressed sequence tag (EST) analysis approach was undertaken to identify the genes involved in photosynthesis and metabolism of Bambusa edulis Murno, an important bamboo crop species in Asia. The cDNA library was constructed from in vitro-grown multiple shoots. Sequencing of the cDNA clones generated 987 5′-end high-quality expressed sequence tags (ESTs, Accession number: FG551848–FG552834), of which 792 were revealed by sequence comparison to be unique. A BLASTX analysis showed that 645 of these genes were similar to genes present in the NCBI database. A total of 389 genes were most similar to rice genes. Nine genes had an E-value of zero. Functional classification of these genes by the Munich Information Center for Protein Sequences (MIPS) showed that most of the genes were related to metabolism and subcellular localization processes. PSI assembly protein (Beycf3) expression was absent in the albino mutant, while PSII 43-kDa protein (BepsbC), chlorophyll synthase (BeCAO) and PSII 10-kDa protein (BePsbR) expression were reduced. These data suggest that in this chloroplast genome-aberrated mutant, both chloroplast-encoded and nucleus-encoded genes were repressed and that this library will be useful for further investigation of bamboo.