Next-Gen sequencing of the transcriptome of triticale

Triticale possesses favourable agronomic attributes originating from both its wheat and rye progenitors, including high grain and biomass yields. Triticale, primarily used as animal feed in North America, is an excellent candidate for production of industrial bio-products. Little is known about the coordination of gene expression of rye and wheat genomes in this intergeneric hybrid, but significant DNA losses from the parental genomes have been reported. To clarify the regulation of gene expression in triticale, we carried out 454 sequencing of cDNAs obtained from root, leaf, stem and floral tissues in different lines of triticale and rye exhibiting different phenotypes and assembled reads into contigs. Related to the data assembly were the absence of reference genomes and the paucity of rye sequences in GenBank or other public databases. Consequently, we have sequenced cDNA libraries from roots, seedlings, leaves, floral tissues and immature seeds to facilitate the identification of triticale sequences originating from rye. To further characterize the wheat-derived cDNAs, we also developed a database close to 25,000 non-redundant full-length wheat coding sequence genes, based on existing databases and contigs that were verified against protein sequences from the grass genomes of Brachypodium distachyon, rice, sorghum and maize.