Deep Sequencing of Suppression Subtractive Hybridisation Drought and Recovery Libraries of the Non-model Crop L.

White clover is a short-lived perennial whose persistence is greatly affected by abiotic stresses, particularly drought. The aim of this work was to characterize its molecular response to water deficit and recovery following re-hydration to identify targets for the breeding of tolerant varieties. We created a white clover reference transcriptome of 16,193 contigs by deep sequencing (mean base coverage 387x) four Suppression Subtractive Hybridization (SSH) libraries (a forward and a reverse library for each treatment) constructed from young leaf tissue of white clover at the onset of the response to drought and recovery.

Bioinformatics in the orphan crops.

Orphan crops are those which are grown as food, animal feed or other crops of some importance in agriculture, but which have not yet received the investment of research effort or funding required to develop significant public bioinformatics resources. Where an orphan crop is related to a well-characterised model plant species, comparative genomics and bioinformatics can often, though not always, be exploited to assist research and crop improvement. This review addresses some challenges and opportunities presented by bioinformatics in the orphan crops, using three examples: forage grasses from the genera Lolium and Festuca, forage legumes and the second generation energy crop Miscanthus.

A novel firmicute protein family related to the actinobacterial resuscitation-promoting factors by non-orthologous domain displacement.

Background: In Micrococcus luteus growth and resuscitation from starvation-induced dormancy is controlled by the production of a secreted growth factor. This autocrine resuscitation-promoting factor (Rpf) is the founder member of a family of proteins found throughout and confined to the actinobacteria (high G + C Gram-positive bacteria). The aim of this work was to search for and characterise a cognate gene family in the firmicutes (low G + C Gram-positive bacteria) and obtain information about how they may control bacterial growth and resuscitation.