Scientists Construct Cassava cDNA Library

Cassava is a plant species known for its remarkable tolerance to abiotic stresses like drought and salinity. It is the third largest source of carbohydrates for human food in the world, and an important staple food for Africa. There is also a growing interest in using cassava as a biomass source for fuel production. Because of the crop’s complex genetic makeup and long growth cycle, traditional approach in breeding new cassava varieties has met little success. The use of biotechnology to improve cassava cultivars is a more straightforward strategy. Knowledge on the background of stress-related genes will be indispensable for biotech approaches, like marker-assisted breeding and direct transformation.

Scientists from Japan and the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) in Colombia have constructed a full-length cDNA library of cassava plants under normal, heat, drought, aluminum and post harvest physiological deterioration conditions. CDNA libraries are collection of clones containing complementary DNA (DNA constructed from mRNAs) often intended to represent the genes that are expressed within a given cell or tissue type at a given period. The cassava cDNA library is expected to propel research in cassava improvement for high yield under abiotic stress, providing full sequences of stress-responsive genes and expanding the gene catalog of this species.

The abstract of the paper publishec by BMC Plant Biology is available at http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2229/7/66