Transcriptome Analysis of the Potato Tuber Life Cycle

Project Details

Description

In Denmark, most potatoes are used in the production of starch. Denmark is rated third in exporting potato starch in the world. Potato starch is used as a substrate for a variety of modifications, introducing unique properties for a number of specialized applications in food, paper and pharmaceutical industries. A larger research effort entitled ?Exploring the Biosynthetic Potential of Potato? is underway which provides a modern foundation for competitiveness in potato tuber breeding, molecular farming of improved starch and novel protein and enzyme products. The present study is a part of above ongoing research programme. The objective of the study is to determine the genes expressed during the different stages in the development of a potato tuber: namely, tuber initiation, mature tuber, at harvest, late in dormancy and at sprouting. Each stage is likely to be regulated and controlled by a large set of interacting expressed genes. The method of quantitatively determining the genes expressed during these stages is done by an experimental technique called Serial Analysis of Gene Expression (SAGE). The principle of SAGE is based on isolation of unique sequence tags (15bp in length). For this purpose, field grown tubers (Solanum tuberosum var. Kuras) are used and a SAGE tag library is produced using the existing SAGE protocol. The idea is to determine a sequence of 50000 tags per library. A previous study with the mature tuber has been shown that this will yield about 20000 unique tags. Analysis of data from these SAGE libraries together with the data from mature tuber will constitute a detailed view of which genes are expressed during the sequence of tuber development.
StatusFinished
Effective start/end date01/08/200205/06/2008

Collaborative partners

  • LKF-Vandel
  • K M C, KARTOFFELMELCENTRALEN, AMBA
  • AKV Langholt

Funding

  • Det Strategiske Forskningsråd: DKK3,000,000.00

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