A landmark to understand molecular diversity between Arabidospsis and tomato.

Abstract

To investigate biological diversity between plants, which diverged more than 100 million years ago, we transferred Arabidopsis large genomic DNA fragments to tomato by using TAC vector for the expression analysis of various genes. Expression of genes on the DNA fragments were analyzed by using DNA array. No obvious effect on the internal tomato gene expression analyzed was seen in the transgenic tomato plants. By comparing expression patterns found in leaf, rachis (petiol) and root of these plants, transgenes were classified into two groups. The first group contains genes whose expressions were similar in two species, suggestting a conservation of transcription regulation in these plants. Contrary, the genes that exhibited distinct expression between plants are categorized in the other group. These result provides a landmark to understand biological diversity at molecular level in plants.