2006 年 99 巻 p. 233-244
Heterologous hybridization was carried out with an Arabidopsis macroarray and cDNAs synthesized from total RNAs of the liverwort Marchantia polymorpha and the moss Physcomitrella patens. Total RNA isolated from A. thaliana plants was also used. The macroarray contained 5,760 Arabidopsis ESTs, corresponding to 4,372 genes. Intra- and inter-filter variations showed less than 2-fold range for almost all of the spots. Genes numbering 1,647 (37.7%), 1,427 (32.6%), and 1,217 (27.8%) had hybridization signals with intensities three-fold greater than that of λ DNA (negative control), and were thus defined as expressed in A. thaliana plants, M. polymorpha thalli, and P. patens protonemata, respectively. Seventy-nine percent of the genes expressed in M. polymorpha were also expressed in P. patens. Overall, the three species had 763 expressed genes in common. Twenty-five co-expressed genes were chosen, based on their high expression levels in M. polymorpha, and 17 in P. patens EST clones related to these genes were identified, each showing more than 60% identity with the corresponding A. thaliana gene at the nucleotide level. Three hundred and sixty three genes were detected in bryophytes but not in A. thaliana. Of the 25 highly expressed bryophyte-specific genes, 14 had the P. patens EST homologs with greater than 60% identity to an A. thaliana gene. These results suggest that hybridization of Arabidopsis macroarrays with heterologous cDNA is a useful tool for gene expression profiling of distantly related plant species such as bryophytes.
