Crassostrea gigas

The C. gigas EST sequences generated by the Genoscope will:

• help identify, in a much straightforward way, new pertinent key genes for functional purposes (physiology of growth, reproduction and development, immunity). Those will provide new tools to improve this species by genetic selection.
• be used for evolutionary studies by comparison with orthologous sequences from other mollusc species, other Lophotrochozoans or other bilaterian animals.
• complement an initial 9059 unigene microarray currentlyavailable. The resulting microarray will be more representative of the whole transcriptome and therefore extremely useful in transcriptomic programs for investigating global gene expression changes. This should help deliver a more integrative picture of the gene networks activated in the context of particular ecophysiological constrains (either in controlled conditions or in the field) and help reveal major gene networks contributing to a given physiological process under study.
• be used to identify SNPs for further genetic studies in both experimental and field populations, for population genetic and mapping studies.
• be used for recognition of haemocyte tags produced by SAGE technology.
• help to boost the sequencing of whole genome, as currently proposed by an international consortium.

Genoscope will undertake the sequencing of about 30,000 ESTs from normalized libraries from different organs of Crassostrea gigas :

• Gonad cDNA library: 10,000 ESTs
• Haemocyte cDNA library: 10,000 ESTs
• All developmental stages cDNA library: 10,000 ESTs

Simple reads will be performed in 5’. If results are conclusive, a total of 100,000 reads will be performed.

Contacts: Patrick Wincker (Genoscope) - Pascal Favrel (University of Caen)