News

Chen and Stelly will participate in the International Cotton Genome Initiative (ICGI) biennial meeting in Hyderabad, India. Stelly is the elected Chair of ICGI and Chen has organized a session that will examine possible elements and approaches to a sequencing effort.

TM-1 ovule (-3 ~ +3 DPA) full-length cDNA library construction was completed. 51,072 clones were arrayed in 384-well plates (133 plates). Duplicate sets were made and one set was sent to TIGR for sequencing. 49,920 cDNAs (130 plates) are being sequenced at TIGR and ~40,000 ESTs are expected to be generated soon.

NSF cotton fiber genomics project meeting was held in USDA-ARS, Southern Regional Research Center, New Orleans, LA. Members from each lab gave short presentations about the progress made and discussed about the future plans as well. This meeting was held in conjunction with the Beltwide Cotton Conference (Jan. 4th-7th) in New Orleans, LA.

PI, Co-PIs, and project members including postdoc and graduate students attended the Betwide Cotton Conference held in San Antonio, TX.

The project meeting of NSF cotton fiber genomics was held in Austin, Texas. The Chen lab hosted the meeting. Graduate students and postdocs from each lab gave short presentations about the progress made and discussed about their future research plans. Two close collaborators, Chris Town at TIGR and Roy Cantrell at Cotton Inc., were present at the meeting. We discussed future strategies of cotton genomics research including potential approaches to cotton genome sequencing.

The annual Cotton Fiber Genomics project meeting was held in Austin. The project was funded by the National Science Foundation and focused on “Genetic and Functional Genomic Analysis of Early Events in Cotton Fiber Development”. The attendees of the meeting include:

PI: Chen Lab (David Pang, Yuki Guan, Misook Ha, Vikram Agarwal, UT-Austin.
Co-PI: Triplett Lab (He Jim Kim, Doug Hinchliffe, USDA-ARS/UNO).
Co-PI: David Stelly (Shivapriya Manchali, Texas A&M).
Co-PI: Peggy Thaxton (Mississippi State University).
Co-PI: Sing-Hoi Sze (Texas A&M).
Collaborator: Candace Haigler (North Carolina State University).
Collaborator: Brian Scheffler (USDA ARS MSA Genomics Laboratory, Stoneville, MS).
Collaborator: Pablo Rabinowicz (Institute for Genome Sciences, University of Maryland).
Industry Representative: Don Jones (Cotton Incorporated)

The cotton fiber genomics project funded by NSF is approved for no-cost extension until August 31, 2010. The research team plans to complete a few more large experiments and publish several papers and will submit a competitive renewal proposal in January 2010.

Cotton Fiber Genomics – Dr. Z. Jeffrey Chen and his colleagues will use next-generation DNA sequencing technologies to study the genomics of fiber production in cotton, the largest source of natural and renewable fiber in the world, with a $3.8 million grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF).

The annual Cotton Fiber Genomics project meeting was held in Austin. The project was funded by the National Science Foundation and focused on “Functional and Sequence Analysis of Fiber development on Tetraploid Cotton”. The attendees of the meeting include:
PI: Chen Lab (David Pang, Yuki Guan, Xiaoli Shi, UT-Austin)
Co-PI: David Stelly (Shivapriya Manchali, Texas A&M)
Co-PI: Candace Haigler (North Carolina State University).
Co-PI : Brian Scheffler (USDA ARS MSA Genomics Laboratory, Stoneville, MS).
Industry Representative: Don Jones (Cotton Incorporated)

The project meeting was held at Cotton Inc. in Cary, North Carolina. The project participants discussed and planned cotton (TM-1) physical mapping, BAC end sequencing, RNA-seq, and other sequencing activities, as well as coordination of outreach activities.

Attendees:
PI: Jeff Chen (Yuki Guan, Gyoungju Nah, UT-Austin)
Co-PI: Candace Haigler (Rich Tuttle, Mike Stiff, Sovika Thapas, NC State)
Co-PI: Brian Scheffler (USDA ARS MSA Genomics Laboratory, Alcorn State University)
Co-PI: David Stelly (Amanda Hulse, Texas A&M)
Collaborator: Chris Saski (Clemson University Genomics Institute)

Industry Representative and Collaborator: Don Jones (Cotton Incorporated)