Construction of a high-quality genomic BAC library for Chinese peanut cultivar Zhonghua 8 with high oil content

BACKGROUND: Arachis hypogaea L. (2n = 4× = 40, AABB) is one of the most important oil and economic crop plants in the word. This species has the largest genome size of about 2,813 Mb among the oil crop species. Zhonghua 8 is a peanut cultivar planted widely in central China and has several superior traits including high oil content, high yield and disease resistance. A high-quality BAC library of Zhonghua 8 was constructed for future researches on the genomics of Chinese peanut cultivars. RESULTS: A Hin d III-digested genomic BAC (bacterial artificial chromosome) library was constructed with the genomic DNA from leaves of Zhonghua 8. This BAC library consists of 160,512 clones and the average insert is estimated about 102 kb ranging from 30 to 150 kb. The library represents about 5.55× haploid genome equivalents, and provides a 99.71% probability of finding specific genes. The empty-vector rate is under 5 percent detected from 200 randomly selected clones. Probing of 384 clones with the psbA gene of barley chloroplast and the atp6 gene of rice mitochondrion indicated that the contamination with organellar DNA is insignificant. Successive subculture of three clones showed that the inserts are stable in one hundred generations. CONCLUSIONS: This study presented the construction of a high-quality BAC library for the genome of Chinese cultivated peanut. Many essential experiences were summarized in the present study. This BAC library can serve as a substantial platform for development of molecular marker, isolation of genes and further genome research. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/1999-3110-55-8) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.