Research article
ESTs and EST-linked polymorphisms for genetic mapping and phylogenetic reconstruction in the guppy, Poecilia reticulata
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* Corresponding author: Christine Dreyer christine.dreyer@tuebingen.mpg.de
Department of Molecular Biology, Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology, Tübingen, D72076, Germany
BMC Genomics 2007, 8:269 doi:10.1186/1471-2164-8-269
Published: 8 August 2007Abstract
Background
The guppy, Poecilia reticulata, is a well-known model organism for studying inheritance and variation of male ornamental traits as well as adaptation to different river habitats. However, genomic resources for studying this important model were not previously widely available.
Results
With the aim of generating molecular markers for genetic mapping of the guppy, cDNA libraries were constructed from embryos and different adult organs to generate expressed sequence tags (ESTs). About 18,000 ESTs were annotated according to BLASTN and BLASTX results and the sequence information from the 3' UTRs was exploited to generate PCR primers for re-sequencing of genomic DNA from different wild type strains. By comparison of EST-linked genomic sequences from at least four different ecotypes, about 1,700 polymorphisms were identified, representing about 400 distinct genes. Two interconnected MySQL databases were built to organize the ESTs and markers, respectively. A robust phylogeny of the guppy was reconstructed, based on 10 different nuclear genes.
Conclusion
Our EST and marker databases provide useful tools for genetic mapping and phylogenetic studies of the guppy.