Comparative analysis of expression profiles of counterpart gene sets between Brassica rapa and Arabidopsis thaliana during fungal pathogen Colletotrichum higginsianum infection

Abstract

To perform comparative sequence and transcriptome analyses between Brassica rapa and Arabidopsis thaliana, we prepared a B. rapa cDNA microarray using 1,820 (ca. 2 K) cDNA clones selected from 2,166 non-redundant sequences of cDNA library of Chinese cabbage. The gene expression during infection with fungal pathogen Colletotrichum higginsianum and treatments with signaling molecules was analyzed using 2 K B. rapa and 1.2 K Arabidopsis cDNA microarrays. In B. rapa, the results suggested a large correlation coefficient between compatible pathogen C. higginsianum-infection and the treatment with salicylic acid, methyl jasmonate, or ethephon. The expression profiles of 145 counterpart gene sets between the B. rapa and Arabidopsis were distributed in the self-organizing map analysis. The 28 % of them indicated similarities in the two species transcriptome. These expressed sequence tag (EST) and microarray data should provide a valuable resource for functional genomics on the crops.