The United States National Science Foundation project on developing tools for the study of the Fagaceae: Castanea, Quercus, and Fagus

The National Science Foundation of the United States has funded a four-year project to develop genomic tools for the Fagaceae, the beech family, which includes chestnut (Castanea), oak (Quercus), and beech (Fagus). A large amount of cDNA sequence of Castanea, Quercus, and Fagus is being generated by pyrosequencing, a new technique that can produce large amounts of DNA sequence at a lower cost per nucleotide than conventional Sanger-Coulson sequencing. New molecular markers, primarily Single-Nucleotide Polymorphisms, are being discovered, and three Bacterial Artificial Chromosome Libraries of Castanea mollissima cv. 'Vanuxem' have been generated and are available for purchase at the Clemson University Genomics Institute. All sequence information generated by the project will be available on-line at www.fagaceae.org.