Creeping bentgrass (Agrostis stolonifera L.) is a cool-season turfgrass species commonly grown on golf courses throughout the United States. Genomics tools are being explored to aid in the development of new cultivars with enhanced disease resistance. One way to enhance the utility of genomics tools in creeping bentgrass is through the use of comparative genomics. Comparative genomics can be used to share information between a well-characterized model species and a large genome crop species. Approximately 15,000 EST sequences have been generated in a cooperative project involving Rutgers University, The University of Wisconsin, Michigan State University, and the USDA-ARS. Blast searches involving the ESTs and Rice genome sequences have been conducted to identify the likely location of introns. Primers have been designed to amplify intron regions and are being evaluated to identify useful polymorphic primer pairs. Approximately 1000 ESTs show significant sequence similarity with two rice genome regions separated by a region of no homology indicating the presence of a putative intron. The primer sets are being evaluated and useful polymorphisms will be presented.
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