Abstract
Formaldehyde (HCHO) is one of the main indoor air pollutants causing sick house syndrome. Our ultimate goal is to produce ornamental plants whose capacity of absorbing and detoxifying HCHO is enhanced by genetic engineering. Since the toxic mechanism of HCHO in plants is not known, we investigated here the effect of HCHO on the gene expression in Arabidopsis using a newly constructed chamber in which HCHO concentration and humidity can be held constant. The plants of 7-8 weeks-old after sowing was exposed to HCHO at either low (1-1.5 ppm) or high (14.5 ppm) concentrations at 24oC for 2.5 hrs. Total RNA was prepared from rosetta leaves
and subjected to microarray analysis. The sum of the number of genes whose expression level increased >10-fold or decreased <1/10 were 16 at low HCHO and 75 at high HCHO. There were found genes related to abiotic stress response and hormone metabolism.
