Monitoring expression profiles of Arabidopsis Genes in the process of cold acclimation and deacclimation using DNA microarrays

Abstract

Plants respond and adapt to abiotic stress to survive under stress conditions. Many genes that respond to drought and cold stress at transcriptional level have been described, but there are few reports on genes involved in the recovery process from abiotic stress. We have analyzed gene expression profiles of Arabidopsis in the process of dehydration stress and rehydration from dehydration stress using a 7k RAFL-cDNA microarray (Oono et al. 2003, Plant J). In this study, we analyzed gene expression profiles in the process of cold acclimation and deacclimation using the 7k RAFL-cDNA microarray and an Agilent 22k oligonucleotide array (submitted) and are studying functional analysis of several genes.
We analysed relationship between gene expression profiles and metabolic profiles in cold acclimation and deacclimation. We discuss roles of key genes involved in the biosynthesis of carbohydrates such as raffinose and maltose, and proline that have important roles in cold acclimation.