Functional Genomics in Arabidopsis-related Halophyte, Thellungiella halophila using Arabidopsis Microarray

Abstract

Thellungiella halophila (salt cress) is a halophyte, and a close relative of Arabidopsis. T. halophila genes have high sequence identity with those of Arabidopsis. T. halophila is quite salt tolerant and can grow in 500mM NaCl medium. However, the salt cress plants do not produce any morphological alterations during salt adaptation. It can be thought that the salt tolerance of the salt cress may be due to similar as in glycophyte. To examine the mechanism of salt tolerance in T. halophila, we analyzed expression profiles in T. halophila by using Arabidopsis cDNA microarray to compare the profiles with those of Arabidopsis. The microarray analysis revealed that many genes known as abiotic and biotic-stress inducible ones were expressed at higher level even in the absence of salt stress. Furthermore, the salt cress was more tolerant to oxidative stress than Arabidopsis. We will discuss molecular mechanism of salt tolerance of T. halophila.