Abstract

Eucalyptus globulus is the most important commercial temperate hardwood in the world because of its wood properties and due to its characteristics for biofuel production. However, only a very low number of expressed sequence tags (ESTs) are publicly available for this tree species. We constructed a cDNA from E. globulus seedlings subjected to low temperature and sequenced 9,913 randomly selected clones, generating 8,737 curated ESTs. The assembly produced 1,062 contigs and 3,879 singletons forming a Eucalyptus unigene set. Based on BLASTX analysis, 89.3% of the contigs and 88.5% of the singletons had significant similarity to known genes in the non-redundant database of GenBank. The Eucalyptus unigene set generated is a valuable public resource that provides an initial model for genes and regulatory pathways involved in cell wall biosynthesis at low temperature.