Poster: Reproductive development

Abs # 355: Identification and molecular studies of genes preferentially expressed in the Arabidopsis flower

Presenter:	Hu, Wei , wzh100@psu.edu
Authors	Hu, Wei  (A)   Bowers, Christian  (B)   Ma, Hong  (A)
Affiliations:	(A): Department of Biology, Pennsylvania State University (B): Department of Statistics, Pennsylvania State University

Flower development is essential for successful sexual reproduction in plants. In Arabidopsis, more than one hundred genes have been shown genetically to function in this process. To identify additional genes that might play important roles in flower development, 1587 cDNA fragments from a subtractive floral cDNA library were sequenced, which represent 1222 unique genes. Among these, 17 genes were recognized to be expressed anywhere for the first time, since they were not represented by previous EST and full-length cDNA datasets. In addition, 724 genes were not shown to be expressed in the flower by previous floral EST datasets. The products of these genes include 49 transcriptional regulators, 31 protein kinases, 12 zinc finger proteins and other signaling proteins. cDNA microarray chips derived from this floral cDNA library were hybridized with probes derived from wild-type Arabidopsis rosette leaves and floral buds. 97 genes were found to be expressed at higher levels in the flower than in the leaf by Significance Analysis of Microarray method (SAM) with a 1.0% false discovery rate (FDR). Further RT-PCR analyses of some flower-preferential genes confirmed microarray results. We are in the process of characterizing several flower-preferential genes that encode putative regulatory proteins and are expressed at relatively low to moderate levels. We will present our progress in these studies.