The Status, Quality, and Expansion of the NIH Full-Length cDNA Project: The Mammalian Gene Collection (MGC)

Daniela S Gerhard, Lukas Wagner, Elise A Feingold, Carolyn M Shenmen, Lynette H Grouse, Greg Schuler, Steven L Klein, Susan Old, Rebekah Rasooly, Peter Good, Mark Guyer, Allison M Peck, Jeffery G Derge, David Lipman, Francis S Collins, Wonhee Jang, Steven Sherry, Mike Feolo, Leonie Misquitta, Eduardo Lee, Kirill Rotmistrovsky, Susan F Greenhut, Carl F Schaefer, Kenneth Buetow, Tom I Bonner, David Haussler, Jim Kent, Mark Kiekhaus, Terry Furey, Michael Brent, Christa Prange, Kirsten Schreiber, Nicole Shapiro, Narayan K Bhat, Ralph F Hopkins, Florence Hsie, Tom Driscoll, M Bento Soares, Tom L Casavant, Todd E Scheetz, Michael J Brown-stein, Ted B Usdin, Shiraki Toshiyuki, Piero Carninci, Yulan Piao, Dawood B Dudekula, Minoru S H Ko, Koichi Kawakami, Yutaka Suzuki, Sumio Sugano, C E Gruber, M R Smith, Blake Simmons, Troy Moore, Richard Waterman, Stephen L Johnson, Yijun Ruan, Chia Lin Wei, S Mathavan, Preethi H Gunaratne, Jiaqian Wu, Angela M Garcia, Stephen W Hulyk, Edwin Fuh, Ye Yuan, Anna Sneed, Carla Kowis, Anne Hodgson, Donna M Muzny, John McPherson, Richard A Gibbs, Jessica Fahey, Erin Helton, Mark Ketteman, Anuradha Madan, Stephanie Rodrigues, Amy Sanchez, Michelle Whiting, Anup Madari, Alice C Young, Keith D Wetherby, Steven J Granite, Peggy N Kwong, Charles P Brinkley, Russell L Pearson, Gerard G Bouffard, Robert W Blakesly, Eric D Green, Mark C Dickson, Alex C Rodriguez, Jane Grimwood, Jeremy Schmutz, Richard M Myers, Yaron S N Butterfield, Malachi Griffith, Obi L Griffith, Martin I Krzywinski, Nancy Liao, Ryan Morin, Diana Palmquist, Anca S Petrescu, Ursula Skalska, Duane E Smailus, Jeff M Stott, Angelique Schnerch, Jacqueline E Schein, Steven J M Jones, Robert A Holt, Agnes Baross, Marco A Marra, Sandra Clifton, Kathryn A Makowski, Stephanie Bosak, Joel Malek

The National Institutes of Health's Mammalian Gene Collection (MGC) project was designed to generate and sequence a publicly accessible cDNA resource containing a complete open reading frame (ORF) for every human and mouse gene. The project initially used a random strategy to select clones from a large number of cDNA libraries from diverse tissues. Candidate clones were chosen based on 5'-EST sequences, and then fully sequenced to high accuracy and analyzed by algorithms developed for this project. Currently, more than 11,000 human and 10,000 mouse genes are represented in MGC by at least one clone with a full ORF. The random selection approach is now reaching a saturation point, and a transition to protocols targeted at the missing transcripts is now required to complete the mouse and human collections. Comparison of the sequence of the MGC clones to reference genome sequences reveals that most cDNA clones are of very high sequence quality, although it is likely that some cDNAs may carry missense variants as a consequence of experimental artifact, such as PCR, cloning, or reverse transcriptase errors. Recently, a rat cDNA component was added to the project, and ongoing frog (Xenopus) and zebrafish (Danio) cDNA projects were expanded to take advantage of the high-throughput MGC pipeline.