Blueberry transcriptomics and genomics.
Blueberries contain many beneficial phytochemical compounds that can protect against disease. Several studies have reported results suggesting that pigments and other compounds in berry fruit skins can reduce oxidative stress, protect neural function in the face of aging or environmental insult, and enhance vascular health. It is also becoming clear that blueberry fruits, similar to plant-based medicinals, contain diverse phytochemicals that synergize to produce positive health effects. We are interested in studying metabolic pathways that generate these diverse compounds, using approaches from natural products chemistry, metabolomics, and next-generation sequencing.
In collaboration with Drs. Mary Ann Lila and Allan Brown in the Plants for Human Health Institute and NC State, we are working on sequencing blueberry transcripts and genomic DNA in order to better understand how these pathways are regulated during fruit development and in response to environmental stresses.
In the spring of 2009, our three labs received funds from UNC General Administration to discover and characterize gene sequences involved in production of health-protective phytochemicals in berry fruit. The project, titled "A bioinformatics-intensive probe of the blueberry genome" aims to elucidate the entire expressed gene transcriptome in berry fruit, create a transcriptome database and Web site, and use these data to build a metabolic pathways database for blueberry. Ultimately, we aim to correlate gene expression levels in blueberry with levels of phytochemical compounds that contribute to the positive health benefits of blueberry. This research will result in new tools for breeders that will allow them to select varieties based on health concerns, as well as their agronomic properties.
Progress Thus Far
Click here to view the blueberry ESTs database created by Ehsan Tabari using publicly-available blueberry ESTs from GenBank. Ehsan created the database and companion Web site during his summer 2009 rotation in the Loraine lab, during his first year as a Ph.D. student in Bioinformatics and Genomics at UNC Charlotte.
In spring of 2009, we collected samples from varieties of blueberry plants established by NC State Horticultural Sciences Professor Jim Ballington at the Piedmont Research Station near Salisbury, North Carolina. In the coming months, we plan to measure bio-flavonoid content in berries and perform deep sequencing of the samples to generate millions of additional ESTs. If all goes as planned, very soon we will make available to the community a comprehensive catalog of berry genes that are expressed in fruit, including enzymes that generate health-protective compounds in berry fruit.
Figure 1. Ripe blueberry cluster. Click image to visit our blueberry ESTs database.
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