FURTHER PROGRESS TOWARDS A CATALOG OF ALL ARABIDOPSIS GENES - ANALYSIS OF A SET OF 5000 NONREDUNDANT ESTS

Nearly 7000 Arabidopsis thaliana-expressed sequence tags (ESTs) from 1 0 cDNA libraries have been sequenced, of which almost 5000 non-redunda nt tags have been submitted to the EMBL data bank. The quality of the cDNA libraries used is analysed. Similarity searches in international protein data banks have allowed the detection of significant similarit ies to a wide range of proteins from many organisms. Alignment with ES Ts from the rice systematic sequencing project has allowed the detecti on of amino acid motifs which are conserved between the two organisms, thus identifying tags to genes encoding highly conserved proteins. Th ese genes are candidates for a common framework in genome mapping proj ects in different plants.