Biotech Updates

Clustering of Pathogen-Response Genes in the Genome of Arabidopsis thaliana

October 21, 2011

In a previous study, USDA scientist Olga A. Postnikova and colleagues used heterologous expressed sequence tag (EST) mapping to develop a profile of 4,935 genes linked to infection or defense responses in Arabidopsis thaliana. As follow up to this study, they conducted a computer analysis of these profile and found 1,594 different clustered genes distributed amoung all A. thaliana chromosome, whose co-regulation may be linked to host responses to pathogens.

To support the computer-generated information, the researchers randomly selected two clusters of genes and analyzed their level of expression when A. thaliana ecotypes Col-0 and C24 were exposed to cucumber mosaic virus. Ecotype Col-0 showed susceptibility to the virus, unlike C24, which contain the dominant resistance gene RCY1. In ecotype C24, all clustered genes were turned on upon infection of the virus. These results imply that pathogen-response genes in A. thaliana may be clustered and co-regulated.

Read the research article at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1744-7909.2011.01071.x/full.