Insights from the GC content analysis of 76genome survey sequences (GSS) from Elaeisoleifera

South American oil-palm (Elaeis oleifera) is not cultivated in tropical countries like Malaysia on large scale due to low yield of palm oil derived from its fruit mesocarp. However, its fruit mesocarp oil contains about 68.6 % oleic acid (C(18:1)) which is more than double in comparison to commercially cultivated oilpalm, E. guineensis Jacq Tenera (hybrid of Dura (♀) x Pisifera (♂)). It is also known that E. oleifera is a good source of tocotrienols and carotenoids. Therefore, it is of interest to know the genome sequence of E. oleifera. The objective of this study is to generate genome survey sequences (GSS) to get GC content insight in the E. oleifera genome. The nuclear genomic DNA isolated from young leaf-tissues was digested with EcoRI and NdeI/DraI restriction enzymes; and three genomic DNA libraries were constructed using Lambda ZAP-II, pGEM®-T Easy, and pDONR 222™ as cloning vectors. Generated 76 GSSs were analyzed by using Bioinformatics tools. The analysis result indicates that the adenine, cytosine, guanine and thymine content in generated GSSs are 30%, 20%, 20%, and 30% respectively. In conclusion, based on the precise GC content analysis of the randomly isolated 76 GSSs by using Bioinformatics tools we hypothesize that GC content in E. oleifera genome is 40%. The hypothesized 40% GC content in E. oleifera genome is expected to remain close to the GC content based on the whole genome analysis.(ψ)The nucleotide sequence data reported in this paper have been submitted to dbGSS division of the international DNA database (GenBank/DDBJ/EMBL) under accession numbers: DX575945- DX575972 and EI798032-EI798079.

ABBREVIATIONS: gDNA - Nuclear genomic DNA, GSSs - Genome survey sequences K12, SAOP - South American oil-palm Db1.