Advanced Technologies (Cambridge) Ltd. and the Tobacco Institute of Bergerac (Altadis group) announce to have signed an agreement in order to collaborate on tobacco genome research. The ESTobacco project was born following the call launched at the time of the "genomic" round table of the 5' Tobacco Scientific Meeting of Bergerac. The purpose of this agreement is initially to sequence a large number of expressed tobacco ( Nicotiana tabacum ) genes. This work on the tobacco genome is expected in the next few years to improve our knowledge about the interactions between genes involved in the formation of undesirable compounds in cigarette smoke. A close link exists between the expression of genes in the tobacco plant, the chemical composition of raw tobacco, and the formation of toxic compounds in cigarette smoke. The aim of this project is to be complementary to other tobacco genome sequencing projects which are currently underway. Our strategy is to sequence only genes expressed in tobacco and not the whole genome (95% of DNA is not expressed). The large size of the tobacco genome (29X greater than that of A. thaliana ) precludes the sequencing of the total genome.