Monitoring Expression Profiles of Arabidopsis Gene Expression during Rehydration Process after Dehydration Using ca. 7000 Full-Length cDNA Microarray

Abstract

Plants respond and adapt to drought stress to survive under stress conditions. Several genes that respond to drought at the transcriptional level have been described,*but there are few reports on genes involved in the recovery process from dehydration. Analysis of*rehydration-inducible genes should help not only to understand the molecular mechanisms of stress responses of higher plants, but also to improve the stress tolerance of crops by gene manipulation. We used a full-length cDNA microarray with ca. 7000 Arabidopsis full-length cDNAs and identified 154 rehydration-inducible genes. Among them, 59 genes contained the ACTCAT sequence involved in proline- and hypoosmolarity-inducible gene expression in their promoter regions. Venn diagram analysis showed relationship of the rehydration-inducible genes to proline-inducible genes and water-treatment-inducible genes. Functional analysis of rehydration-inducible genes and rehydration-repressed genes revealed their functions not only in the release from a stressed status but also recovery for growth of plants.