Establishment of a cDNA library from Bambusa edulis Murno in vitro-grown shoots Nein-Tzu Liu Æ Fu-Hui Wu Æ Hsin-Sheng Tsay Æ Wei-Chin Chang Æ Choun-Sea Lin Received: 29 December 2007 / Accepted: 4 June 2008 / Published online: 21 June 2008 Ó Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2008 Abstract An expressed sequence tag (EST) analy- sis approach was undertaken to identify the genes involved in photosynthesis and metabolism of Bam- busa edulis Murno, an important bamboo crop species in Asia. The cDNA library was constructed from in vitro-grown multiple shoots. Sequencing of the cDNA clones generated 987 5 0 -end high-quality expressed sequence tags (ESTs, Accession number: FG551848– FG552834), of which 792 were revealed by sequence comparison to be unique. A BLASTX analysis showed that 645 of these genes were similar to genes present in the NCBI database. A total of 389 genes were most similar to rice genes. Nine genes had an E-value of zero. Functional classification of these genes by the Munich Information Center for Protein Sequences (MIPS) showed that most of the genes were related to metabolism and subcellular localization processes. PSI assembly protein (Beycf3) expression was absent in the albino mutant, while PSII 43-kDa protein (BepsbC), chlorophyll synthase (BeCAO) and PSII 10-kDa protein (BePsbR) expression were reduced. These data suggest that in this chloroplast genome-aberrated mutant, both chloroplast-encoded and nucleus- encoded genes were repressed and that this library will be useful for further investigation of bamboo. Keywords Bamboo Á cDNA library Á Albino mutant Á Photosynthesis Abbreviations EST Expression Sequence Tag MIPS Munich Information Center for Protein Sequences NCBI National Center for Biotechnology TDZ Thidiazuron Introduction Bamboo is an important natural resource in many countries throughout Asia and an integral part of Asian culture. Bamboo and its products are also important to the economy of many Asian countries, both as a food item and in the construction and paper pulp industries. Mature stems are used to make utensils, water pipes, musical instruments, and many more items. However, it has proven very difficult to propagate bamboo by in vivo means, and focus has turned to the development of reliable and efficient in vitro propagation methods. Long-term bamboo tissue culture systems are also not without disadvantages, one of which is the appearance N.-T. Liu Á W.-C. Chang Institute of Plant and Microbial Biology, Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan, ROC F.-H. Wu Á C.-S. Lin (&) Agricultural Biotechnology Research Center, Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan, ROC e-mail: cslin99@gate.sinica.edu.tw H.-S. Tsay Institute of Biotechnology, Chaoyang University of Technology, Taichung, Taiwan, ROC 123