Research article

Generation, annotation and analysis of ESTs from Trichoderma harzianum CECT 2413

Juan Antonio Vizcaíno¹ , Francisco Javier González² , M Belén Suárez^1,3 , José Redondo² , Julian Heinrich² , Jesús Delgado-Jarana¹ , Rosa Hermosa³ , Santiago Gutiérrez⁴ , Enrique Monte² , Antonio Llobell¹ and Manuel Rey²

¹  IBVF-CIC Isla de la Cartuja, CSIC/Universidad de Sevilla. Avda. Américo Vespucio s/n. 41092, Sevilla, Spain

²  Newbiotechnic, S. A. (NBT). Parque Industrial de Bollullos A-49 (PIBO). 41110, Bollullos de la Mitación. Sevilla, Spain

³  Spanish-Portuguese Center of Agricultural Research (CIALE), Departamento de Microbiología y Genética, Universidad de Salamanca, Edificio Departamental, lab 208, Plaza Doctores de la Reina s/n, 37007, Salamanca, Spain

⁴  Area of Microbiology. Escuela Superior y Técnica de Ingeniería Agraria. Universidad de León, Campus de Ponferrada. Avda. Astorga s/n. 24400, Ponferrada, Spain

author email corresponding author email

BMC Genomics 2006, 7:193doi:10.1186/1471-2164-7-193

Published:	27 July 2006

Abstract

Background

The filamentous fungus Trichoderma harzianum is used as biological control agent of several plant-pathogenic fungi. In order to study the genome of this fungus, a functional genomics project called "TrichoEST" was developed to give insights into genes involved in biological control activities using an approach based on the generation of expressed sequence tags (ESTs).

Results

Eight different cDNA libraries from T. harzianum strain CECT 2413 were constructed. Different growth conditions involving mainly different nutrient conditions and/or stresses were used. We here present the analysis of the 8,710 ESTs generated. A total of 3,478 unique sequences were identified of which 81.4% had sequence similarity with GenBank entries, using the BLASTX algorithm. Using the Gene Ontology hierarchy, we performed the annotation of 51.1% of the unique sequences and compared its distribution among the gene libraries. Additionally, the InterProScan algorithm was used in order to further characterize the sequences. The identification of the putatively secreted proteins was also carried out. Later, based on the EST abundance, we examined the highly expressed genes and a hydrophobin was identified as the gene expressed at the highest level. We compared our collection of ESTs with the previous collections obtained from Trichoderma species and we also compared our sequence set with different complete eukaryotic genomes from several animals, plants and fungi. Accordingly, the presence of similar sequences in different kingdoms was also studied.

Conclusion

This EST collection and its annotation provide a significant resource for basic and applied research on T. harzianum, a fungus with a high biotechnological interest.