[en] The Canadian Ophiostoma Genome Project, which was initiated in 2001, is a collaborative effort between research teams in four different universities. Its general objective is to conduct a large-scale identification and analysis of genes controlling important aspects of the life cycle of Ophiostomatoid fungi. To this end, several expressed sequence tag (EST) libraries were obtained for the Dutch elm disease pathogen Ophiostoma novo-ulmi and the sapstainer O. piceae, following partial, single-pass automated sequencing of complementary DNA clones. The largest EST library, prepared from yeast like cells of O. novo-ulmi grown at 24 °C, contains over 3,400 readable sequences and serves as a general reference library for Ophiostomatoid fungi. Smaller, specific EST libraries were constructed from mycelia of O. novo-ulmi grown at suboptimal temperatures, from perithecia formed in laboratory crosses, as well as from O. piceae grown on different carbon sources. Ongoing bioinformatic searches in public databases have so far identified over 750 Ophiostoma unique ESTs which show significant homology with other fungal genes of known function, although a high proportion of Ophiostoma ESTs are either orphans (no match to any known gene) or show homology to genes of unknown function. In addition to EST analysis, differential expression of selected genes and structural genomics are also being studied.

[es] El programa canadiense sobre el genoma de Ophiostoma, iniciado en 2001, es una colaboraci&oacute;n entre equipos de investigaci&oacute;n de cuatro universidades diferentes. Su objetivo general es el desarrollo de la identificaci&oacute;n y an&aacute;lisis a gran escala de los genes que controlan algunos aspectos importantes del ciclo vital de los hongos de Ophiostoma. Con este fin, se ha obtenido diversas bibliotecas de marcadores de secuencias expresadas (bibliotecas EST) para la el pat&oacute;geno de la grafiosis Ophiostoma novo-ulmi y para el hongo de tinci&oacute;n vascular O. piceae, seguido de una secuenciaci&oacute;n autom&aacute;tica parcial de un &uacute;nico paso de clones complementarios de ADN. La mayor biblioteca EST, preparada a partir de conidios de O. novo-ulmi cultivadas a 24 &ordm;C, contiene m&aacute;s de 3.400 secuencias leg&iacute;bles, y sirve como biblioteca de referencia para los hongos de Ophiostoma. Se han desarrollado bibliotecas espec&iacute;ficas menores a partir de micelios de O. novo-ulmi cultivados a temperaturas sub-&oacute;ptimas, a partir de los peritecios formados en cruces realizados en laboratorio, as&iacute; como a partir de O. piceae cultivado en distintas fuentes de carb&oacute;n. Las b&uacute;squedas bioinform&aacute;ticas en bases de datos p&uacute;blicas han permitido identificar hasta ahora m&aacute;s de 750 EST exclusivos de Ophiostoma, lo que muestra una significativa homolog&iacute;a con otros genes f&uacute;ngicos de funci&oacute;n conocida, aunque una alta proporci&oacute;n de los EST de Ophiostoma son o bien hu&eacute;rfanos (no relacionados con ning&uacute;n gen conocido), o bien muestran homolog&iacute;a con genes cuya funci&oacute;n es desconocida. Adem&aacute;s del an&aacute;lisis EST, la expresi&oacute;n diferencial de genes seleccionados y la estructura gen&oacute;mica est&aacute;n siendo tambi&eacute;n estudiadas.