Comparative Genomics in Switchgrass Using 61,585 High-Quality Expressed Sequence Tags

The development of genomic resources for switchgrass ( L.), a perennial NAD-malic enzyme type C grass, is required to enable molecular breeding and biotechnological approaches for improving its value as a forage and bioenergy crop. Expressed sequence tag (EST) sequencing is one method that can quickly sample gene inventories and produce data suitable for marker development or analysis of tissue-specific patterns of expression. Toward this goal, three cDNA libraries from callus, crown, and seedling tissues of ‘Kanlow’ switchgrass were end-sequenced to generate a total of 61,585 high-quality ESTs from 36,565 separate clones. Seventy-three percent of the assembled consensus sequences could be aligned with the sorghum [ (L.) Moench] genome at a -value of