Research progress in expressed sequence tag projects of Triticeae crops.

EST, as an expressed sequence tag, represents a cDNA sequence of a gene expressed in a specific tissue and a specific stage. Plant EST project is an important part of the genomics project, in which a huge amount of the species' ESTs are to be obtained,which will then be used to reveal biological mechanisms of the species' life activities at the transcript level. This paper reviews research progress in EST projects of Triticeae crops, mainly including the ESTs number in GenBank database deposited, and their applications to developing molecular markers, enriching genetic or physical maps, comparing genomics, and identifying new genes and expressed genes. In addition, the unsolved problems and application prospects of ESTs projects of Triticeae crops are analyzed.