Abstract
The present study attempts to examine the radioactivity-modulated change of global gene expression patterns in the leaf of rice seedlings upon exposure to radioactive Chernobyl soil (CS), which contains high levels of cesium-137 and strontium-90 both fission products from the reactor core. An in vitro two-week-old rice seedling model system was used (Agrawal et al. 2003), and leaf segments from 3rd leaves were exposed to CS emitted radiation. The radioactivity in CS is measured to be 5.34 micro Gy/day; ca. 11-fold over the (shielded) control level. Leaves were sampled 96 h post-irradiation and total RNA was extracted and the quality checked before performing the Agilent 22K custom oligo DNA microarray experiment.
We detected radioactivity-modulated expression of 516 genes, among which 194 and 322 genes were either up- or down-regulated.
Rice genes were classified into up-/down-regulated 3 main functional categories of information storage and processing (2%/7%), cellular processes and signaling (15%/7%), and metabolism (13%/19%).
References
1.Kimura S, Shibato J, Agrawal GK, Kim YK, Nahm BH, Jwa NS, Iwahashi H, and Rakwal R.: Microarray analysis of rice leaf response to radioactivity from contaminated Chernobyl soil.: Rice Genetics Newsletter, 24: 52-54, 2008.
2.Rakwal R, Agrawal GK, Shibato J, Imanaka T, Fukutani S, Tamogami S, Endo S, Sahoo SK, Masuo Y, Kimura S.: Ultra Low-Dose Radiation: Stress Responses And Impacts Using Rice as a Grass Model : Int. J. Mol. Sci., 10: 1215-1225, 2009.
