Abstract
As the first step to understand the comprehensive mechanism of sexual reproduction of Closterium, cDNA library was constructed from cells that were in the various processes of sexual reproduction and a total of 1,190 5'-end ESTs were established. The 604 ESTs of them were resulted in 174 redundant groups, thus the total number of unique sequences in EST set was 760. Similarity search against the public non-redundant protein database indicated that 370 groups showed no significant matches. Among them, homologues of previously known sex pheromones were detected. Using those non-redundant and other unidentified ESTs, cDNA microarrays containing 3072 cDNAs were prepared. As a first attempt, cDNAs prepared from cells in early stage of mating culture and in non-mating culture were used as probes. As a result, several genes expressed specifically in a mating culture were identified. These included genes encoding sex pheromones, their homologues, and a putative receptor-like protein kinase.
