Analysis and functional annotation of expressed sequence tags of water buffalo

An elucidated genome of domestic livestock river buffalo will contribute enormously to economy and better understanding of genome evolution as well. An attempt is made to obtain genomic information on buffalo, based on total Expressed Sequence Tags (ESTs) of Bubalus bubalis available in public domain. These ESTs were annotated and classified into 15 different functional categories based on their homology to the known proteins. Interestingly, 41.79% of the contigs were found to be buffalo specific novel ESTs with respect to other species used in analysis which needs further studies. Also, 224 pSNPs (putative Single Nucleotide Polymorphism) were detected. This study will provide a home base for further genomic studies of buffalo and comparative studies enabling a starting point for the genome annotation of the organism. Supplementary materials are available for this article online.