Abstract
Iron is a harmful element because of generating free radicals though iron is one of the essential elements for living organisms. Therefore the concentration of iron in a cell is tightly controlled. Ferritin, an iron reservoir protein, is composed of 24 subunits and accumulates up to 4500 iron atoms. Ferritin plays critical role for iron metabolism. Recent studies have clarified the existence of a family of four ferritin genes. However, it is not clear that each gene expression varies depending on the type of exogenous stimulus and developmental stage. In this study, we carried out the Northern blot analysis of the expression of Arabidopsis ferritin genes (AtFer1-4). The probes for the experiment were synthesized from genomic DNA coding a transit peptide which had low similarity with each other. AtFer1 and AtFer3 strongly expressed in response to excess iron though the expression of AtFer2 and AtFer4 was not or slightly detected.
