Jia Peng

This report describes the rationale, approaches, organization, and resource development leading to a large-scale deletion bin map of the hexaploid wheat genome. Accompanying reports in this issue detail results from chromosome bin-mapping of expressed sequence tags representing genes onto the seven homoeologous chromosome groups and a global analysis of the entire mapped wheat EST data set. Among the resources developed were the first extensive public wheat EST collection. Described are protocols for sequencing, sequence processing, EST nomenclature, and the assembly of ESTs into contigs. These contigs plus singletons were used for selection of distinct sequence motif unigenes. Selected ESTs were rearrayed, validated by 5′ and 3′ sequencing, and amplified for probing a series of wheat aneuploid and deletion stocks. Images and data for all Southern hybridizations were deposited in databases and were used by the coordinators for each of the seven homoeologous chromosome groups to validate the mapping results. Results from this project have established the foundation for future developments in wheat genomics.

Pinch force sense plays an important role in the performance of daily finger movements, including tip, key, palmar pinch. The present study investigated the roles of pinch type in the sensation of pinch force among healthy participants in the ipsilateral force reproduction trial. This study instructed forty healthy adult subjects (20 women and 20 men) in producing reference forces at different levels [10, 30, 50% maximal voluntary isometric contraction (MVIC)] by adopting 3 pinch types (tip, key, and palmar pinches) and in reproducing the above force levels with the identical hand. Our study revealed that subjects are significantly more sensitive detecting alterations of pinching forces with tip pinch but not key or palmar pinch under high forces (30 and 50% MVIC) but not at lower force levels (10% MVIC).