Centaurea maculosa preliminary study

ABSTRACT: Competition is a major determinant of plant community structure consisting of both species-specific and general interactions, either of which may influence competitive competency and plant abundance and size. In certain cases, competitive competency could arise from altered gene expression and plant function when an individual is confronted with new competitors. We explored competition at the molecular level by hybridizing transcripts from Centaurea maculosa (spotted knapweed), one of North America's most invasive exotic plant species, to an Arabidopsis microarray chip. Centaurea was grown in competition with Festuca idahoensis (Idaho fescue), a native grass species that generally has weak competitive effects against Centaurea; Gaillardia aristata (Indian blanketflower), a native herbaceous species that tends to be a much stronger competitor against Centaurea; or alone (control). The expression of some genes was found to be relatively uninfluenced by the type of plant neighbor, whereas other patterns of gene expression appeared to be more neighbor specific. To our knowledge, these results are the first to identify genes in an invasive plant that are induced or repressed by plant neighbors and provide a new avenue of insight into the molecular aspects of plant competitive ability. Keywords: treated vs.untreated First file, Chip 508 (9-9-05) is preliminary hyb data to see if this cross species hybridization is possible using the OAR27K chip Experiment 1 (chip 508): The Arabidopsis OAR27K gene chip was hybridized with labeled cDNA probes produced from samples of Centaurea RNA at the W.M. Keck Foundation Biotechnology Resource Laboratory, Yale University. The OAR27K gene chip consists of 70-mer oligos representing approximately 27,000 genes from Arabidopsis. Leaf and root samples were reverse-transcribed into cDNA and labeled with different fluorescent dyes (Cy3 and Cy5) using the Genisphere Array 900 kit (Cat No.W500180) (Genisphere, Hatfield PA). Labeled cDNAs were hybridized to the OAR27Kchip using the Advalytix ArrayBooster DNA Microarray Incubator (Advalytix, Boston MA). Approximately 10ug of each sample was used for hybridization.Experiment 2: Hybridization and labeling followed the procedure above, except the experimental control was Centaurea plants grown alone, and the test situations were Centaurea grown with Gaillardia or Festuca neighbors. In each experiment, RNA from Centaurea grown alone was used as the control (labeled with Cy3) and RNA from Centaurea grown with a neighbor was used as the test (labeled with Cy5). Two replicates were performed for each test situation.

ORGANISM(S): Arabidopsis thaliana

SUBMITTER: Amanda Broz 

PROVIDER: E-GEOD-7443 | biostudies-arrayexpress |

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-arrayexpress