AbstractsBiology & Animal Science

Miscanthus ?? giganteus is a sterile triploid hybrid perennial grass that is asexually propagated through rhizome planting. The increasing desire to discover alternative energy sources has recently heightened interest in developing M. ?? giganteus as a biofuel due to, among other factors, its exceptionally large biomass yield. In this study, mRNA extractions from ten dissimilar M. ?? giganteus tissues were sequenced, generating over eighty-three million high-quality short paired-end reads. Reads were assembled into over sixty-one thousand contiguous sequences, creating a novel representation of the transcriptome for this prominent non-model organism. Active expression of the ESTs was subsequently analyzed by RNA-Seq on pre-existing Sorghum bicolor gene models in order to generate a series of expression profiles for the Miscanthus tissues sampled. This analysis aims to provide a means for the deeper understanding of M. ?? giganteus, with the hope that traits such as biomass accumulation, nutrient utilization, and tolerance of environmental stress can be more thoroughly identified and documented.