Abstract
The basic molecular mechanism of vernalization has been clarified with the identification of some vernalization-related genes. However, we speculate that many as-yet-unidentified genes are acting in regulating the vernalization mechanism. To identify these genes, we performed transcription profiling of genes between vernalized and un-vernalized barley. A PCR-based HiCEP method was used for the analysis. The method is highly sensitive as it can detect a slight difference in gene expression change, and is applicable to every organism since it dose not require prior sequence information. About 28,000 peaks covering predicted expressed transcripts were detected in the analysis. Among them, 1,381 peaks showed more than 3 times up- or down-regulation, and some of them were sequenced. Most of the peaks showed sequence similarities to the genes of metabolic enzymes, but some of them showed similarity to genes of unknown-function, which may provide novel insight in understanding the vernalization mechanism.
