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Title: Mapping of Heterologous Expressed Sequence Tags as an Alternative to Microarrays for Study of Defense Responses in Plants

Author
item BOUTANEAV, ALEXANDER - MOSCOW REGION RUSSIA
item POSTNIKOVA, OLGA - MOSCOW REGION RUSSIA
item Nemchinov, Lev

Submitted to: BMC Genomics
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 6/18/2009
Publication Date: 6/18/2009
Citation: Boutaneav, A.M., Postnikova, O.A., Nemchinov, L.G. 2009. Mapping of Heterologous Expressed Sequence Tags as an Alternative to Microarrays for Study of Defense Responses in Plants. Biomed Central (BMC) Genomics. 10:273.

Interpretive Summary: Understanding the mechanisms that plants engage to protect themselves against a variety of pathogens plays a key role in the development of control strategies aimed to reduce crop losses caused by plant diseases. There are several well-studied model plants on which most of this research is being conducted, such as small flowering plant Arabidopsis thaliana L. whose genome was the first plant genome to be sequenced. In this work, using publicly available data on Arabidopsis genome, we discovered that mechanisms involved in defense reaction against diverse biological agents may be evolutionary conserved in distinct plant species. This knowledge may be directly applicable to increase resistance to pathogens in agriculturally important crops. It is expected that results of this study will be of interest to the wide spectrum of plant researchers in academia and government organizations as well as to representatives of industry.

Technical Abstract: In this study, we used publicly available EST (expressed sequence tags) database derived from four different plant species infected with a variety of pathogens, to generate an expression profile of orthologous genes involved in defense response of a model organism, Arabidopsis thaliana. Computer-assisted prediction identified 4,935 defense-related genes (16% of the total Arabidopsis genome), and demonstrated that gene expression changes in distinct plant species in response to diverse biological agents may be evolutionary conserved. These data were confirmed experimentally by real-time RT-PCR. More than 65% of the arbitrarily selected genes were upregulated in accordance with the EST-generated profile. Our data suggest that plant defense responses are evolutionary conserved and such conservation may involve a wide range of inducible genes composing both defense-related regulatory network and gene regulatory networks controlling plant basic physiological, biochemical, and developmental pathways.