Identification and characterization of differentially expressed ESTs in date palm leaves affected by brittle leaf disease

Brittle leaf disease (BLD) of date palms was first described in the south of Tunisia in 1960. Since then, it progressively spread out to reach epidemic proportions in 1986. Both biotic and abiotic factors have been suggested to be possible causal agents of this disease. However, the research efforts aimed at identifying the causal agent of this disease have still been unsuccessful. In order to get an insight in the molecular mechanisms involved in BLD of date palm, we have constructed suppression subtractive hybridization libraries from affected (ABLD) and healthy leaves (HBLD). This report describes the cloning, sequencing and characterization of 74 independent cDNA derived from the ABLD and the HBLD subtractive libraries. BLAST analysis showed that the ESTs from HBLD library were mainly related to photosynthesis, protein synthesis and ion transport whereas the EST sequences from ABLD were related to stress responsive genes, metabolism associated, protein synthesis and signal transduction.