An overview of recent achievements and development of genomic resources in the Fagaceae is provided, with major emphasis on the genera Castanea and Quercus. The Fagaceae is a large plant family comprising more than 900 species belonging to 8–10 genera. Using a wide range of molecular markers, population genetics and gene diversity surveys were the focus of many studies during the past 20 years. This work set the stage for investigations in genomics beginning in the early 1990s and facilitated the application of genetic and quantitative trait loci mapping approaches. Transferability of markers across species and comparative mapping have indicated tight macrosynteny between Quercus and Castanea. Omic technologies were more recently developed and the corresponding resources are accessible via electronic and physical repositories (expressed sequence tag sequences, single-nucleotide polymorphisms, candidate genes, cDNA clones, bacterial artificial chromosome (BAC) libraries) that have been installed in North America and Europe. BAC libraries and physical maps were also constructed in Castanea and Quercus and provide the necessary resources for full nuclear genome sequencing projects that are currently under way in Castanea mollissima (Chinese chestnut) and Quercus robur (pedunculate oak).

Microsatellites or simple sequence repeats (SSRs) in expressed sequence tags (ESTs) are useful resources for genome analysis because of their abundance, functionality and polymorphism. The advent of commercial second generation sequencing machines has lead to new strategies for developing EST-SSR markers, necessitating the development of bioinformatic framework that can keep pace with the increasing quality and quantity of sequence data produced. We describe an open scheme for analyzing ESTs and developing EST-SSR markers from reads collected by Sanger sequencing and pyrosequencing of sugi (Cryptomeria japonica). We collected 141,097 sequence reads by Sanger sequencing and 1,333,444 by pyrosequencing. After trimming contaminant and low quality sequences, 118,319 Sanger and 1,201,150 pyrosequencing reads were passed to the MIRA assembler, generating 81,284 contigs that were analysed for SSRs. 4,059 SSRs were found in 3,694 (4.54%) contigs, giving an SSR frequency lower than that in seven other plant species with gene indices (5.4–21.9%). The average GC content of the SSR-containing contigs was 41.55%, compared to 40.23% for all contigs. Tri-SSRs were the most common SSRs; the most common motif was AT, which was found in 655 (46.3%) di-SSRs, followed by the AAG motif, found in 342 (25.9%) tri-SSRs. Most (72.8%) tri-SSRs were in coding regions, but 55.6% of the di-SSRs were in non-coding regions; the AT motif was most abundant in 3′ untranslated regions. Gene ontology (GO) annotations showed that six GO terms were significantly overrepresented within SSR-containing contigs. Forty–four EST-SSR markers were developed from 192 primer pairs using two pipelines: read2Marker and the newly-developed CMiB, which combines several open tools. Markers resulting from both pipelines showed no differences in PCR success rate and polymorphisms, but PCR success and polymorphism were significantly affected by the expected PCR product size and number of SSR repeats, respectively. EST-SSR markers exhibited less polymorphism than genomic SSRs. We have created a new open pipeline for developing EST-SSR markers and applied it in a comprehensive analysis of EST-SSRs and EST-SSR markers in C. japonica. The results will be useful in genomic analyses of conifers and other non-model species.

Background: In temperate regions, the time lag between vegetative bud burst and bud set determines the duration of the growing season of trees (i.e. the duration of wood biomass production). Dormancy, the period during which the plant is not growing, allows trees to avoid cold injury resulting from exposure to low temperatures. An understanding of the molecular machinery controlling the shift between these two phenological states is of key importance in the context of climatic change. The objective of this study was to identify genes upregulated during endo- and ecodormancy, the two main stages of bud dormancy. Sessile oak is a widely distributed European white oak species. A forcing test on young trees was first carried out to identify the period most likely to correspond to these two stages. Total RNA was then extracted from apical buds displaying endo- and ecodormancy. This RNA was used for the generation of cDNA libraries, and in-depth transcriptome characterization was performed with 454 FLX pyrosequencing technology.Results: Pyrosequencing produced a total of 495,915 reads. The data were cleaned, duplicated reads removed, and sequences were mapped onto the oak UniGene data. Digital gene expression analysis was performed, with bothRstatistics and the R-Bioconductor packages (edgeR and DESeq), on 6,471 contigs with read numbers ≥ 5 within any contigs. The number of sequences displaying significant differences in expression level (read abundance) between endo- and ecodormancy conditions ranged from 75 to 161, depending on the algorithm used. 13 genes displaying significant differences between conditions were selected for further analysis, and 11 of these genes, including those for glutathione-S-transferase (GST) and dehydrin xero2 (XERO2) were validated by quantitative PCR.Conclusions: The identification and functional annotation of differentially expressed genes involved in the “response to abscisic acid”, “response to cold stress” and “response to oxidative stress” categories constitutes a major step towards characterization of the molecular network underlying vegetative bud dormancy, an important life history trait of long-lived organisms.

Background: The Fagaceae family comprises about 1,000 woody species worldwide. About half belong to the Quercus family. These oaks are often a source of raw material for biomass wood and fiber. Pedunculate and sessile oaks, are among the most important deciduous forest tree species in Europe. Despite their ecological and economical importance, very few genomic resources have yet been generated for these species. Here, we describe the development of an EST catalogue that will support ecosystem genomics studies, where geneticists, ecophysiologists, molecular biologists and ecologists join their efforts for understanding, monitoring and predicting functional genetic diversity. Results: We generated 145,827 sequence reads from 20 cDNA libraries using the Sanger method. Unexploitable chromatograms and quality checking lead us to eliminate 19,941 sequences. Finally a total of 125,925 ESTs were retained from 111,361 cDNA clones. Pyrosequencing was also conducted for 14 libraries, generating 1,948,579 reads, from which 370,566 sequences (19.0%) were eliminated, resulting in 1,578,192 sequences. Following clustering and assembly using TGICL pipeline, 1,704,117 EST sequences collapsed into 69,154 tentative contigs and 153,517 singletons, providing 222,671 non-redundant sequences (including alternative transcripts). We also assembled the sequences using MIRA and PartiGene software and compared the three unigene sets. Gene ontology annotation was then assigned to 29,303 unigene elements. Blast search against the SWISS-PROT database revealed putative homologs for 32,810 (14.7%) unigene elements, but more extensive search with Pfam, Refseq_protein, Refseq_RNA and eight gene indices revealed homology for 67.4% of them. The EST catalogue was examined for putative homologs of candidate genes involved in bud phenology, cuticle formation, phenylpropanoids biosynthesis and cell wall formation. Our results suggest a good coverage of genes involved in these traits. Comparative orthologous sequences (COS) with other plant gene models were identified and allow to unravel the oak paleo-history. Simple sequence repeats (SSRs) and single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) were searched, resulting in 52,834 SSRs and 36,411 SNPs. All of these are available through the Oak Contig Browser http://genotoul-contigbrowser.toulouse.inra.fr:9092/Quercus_robur/index.html. Conclusions: This genomic resource provides a unique tool to discover genes of interest, study the oak transcriptome, and develop new markers to investigate functional diversity in natural populations.

High-density linkage maps facilitate the mapping of target genes and the construction of partial linkage maps around target loci to develop markers for marker-assisted selection (MAS). MAS is quite challenging in conifers because of their large, complex, and poorly-characterized genomes. Our goal was to construct a high-density linkage map to facilitate the identification of markers that are tightly linked to a major recessive male-sterile gene (ms1) for MAS in C. japonica, a species that is important in Japanese afforestation but which causes serious social pollinosis problems. We constructed a high-density saturated genetic linkage map for C. japonica using expressed sequence-derived co-dominant single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) markers, most of which were genotyped using the GoldenGate genotyping assay. A total of 1261 markers were assigned to 11 linkage groups with an observed map length of 1405.2 cM and a mean distance between two adjacent markers of 1.1 cM; the number of linkage groups matched the basic chromosome number in C. japonica. Using this map, we located ms1 on the 9^th linkage group and constructed a partial linkage map around the ms1 locus. This enabled us to identify a marker (hrmSNP970_sf) that is closely linked to the ms1 gene, being separated from it by only 0.5 cM. Using the high-density map, we located the ms1 gene on the 9^th linkage group and constructed a partial linkage map around the ms1 locus. The map distance between the ms1 gene and the tightly linked marker was only 0.5 cM. The identification of markers that are tightly linked to the ms1 gene will facilitate the early selection of male-sterile trees, which should expedite C. japonica breeding programs aimed at alleviating pollinosis problems without harming productivity.

Many northern-hemisphere forests are dominated by oaks. These species extend over diverse environmental conditions and are thus interesting models for studies of plant adaptation and speciation. The genomic toolbox is an important asset for exploring the functional variation associated with natural selection. The assembly of previously available and newly developed long and short sequence reads for two sympatric oak species, Quercus robur and Quercus petraea, generated a comprehensive catalog of transcripts for oak. The functional annotation of 91 k contigs demonstrated the presence of a large proportion of plant genes in this unigene set. Comparisons with SwissProt accessions and five plant gene models revealed orthologous relationships, making it possible to decipher the evolution of the oak genome. In particular, it was possible to align 9.5 thousand oak coding sequences with the equivalent sequences on peach chromosomes. Finally, RNA-seq data shed new light on the gene networks underlying vegetative bud dormancy release, a key stage in development allowing plants to adapt their phenology to the environment. In addition to providing a vast array of expressed genes, this study generated essential information about oak genome evolution and the regulation of genes associated with vegetative bud phenology, an important adaptive traits in trees. This resource contributes to the annotation of the oak genome sequence and will provide support for forward genetics approaches aiming to link genotypes with adaptive phenotypes.