Rice Microarray Project : Setting up the Micorarray System and the Present Situation

Abstract

As we reported in the last meeting, we have selected 8,987 EST clones to fabricate the rice cDNA microarrays. Full inserts or gene-specific portions (3'-UTR) of the EST clones were used as probe. Targets from rice calli treated with ABA or gibberellin were hybridized to full insert and 3'-UTR arrays to examine the character of probes. 25 genes and 117 genes were substantially induced or suppressed in full insert and 3'-UTR arrays, respectively. The results suggest full insert arrays are effective for comprehensive analysis of family gene expression whereas 3'-UTR arrays are specific to detect the differential expression of genes.
We constructed the Rice Expression Database (RED) to store microarray data of 1,300 RNA samples. The RED was opened to the public in December, 2002. We will also mention the next rice microarray which contains 22,000 oligonucleotide probes (60-mer) based on the outcome of Rice Full Length cDNA Project.