The transcriptional response of Arabidopsis to genotoxic stress - a high-density colony array study (HDCA)

A genome-wide transcription profiling of Arabidopsis upon genotoxic stress has been performed using a high-density colony array (HDCA). The array was based on a library of 27 000 cDNA clones derived from Arabidopsis cells challenged with bleomycin plus mitomycin C. The array covers more than 10 000 individual genes (corresponding to at least 40% of Arabidopsis genes). After hybridisation of the HDCA with labelled cDNA probes obtained from genotoxin-treated (bleomycin plus mitomycin C, 6 h) and untreated seedlings, 39 genes revealed an increased and 24 genes a decreased expression among the 3200 highly expressed clones (representing approximately 1200 individual genes because of redundancy of the cDNA library). Of the 4900 clones with a low transcriptional level, the expression of 500 clones was found to be altered and 57 genes with increased and 22 genes with decreased expression were identified by sequence analysis of 135 identified clones. The HDCA results were validated by real-time PCR analysis. For about 80% of genes (34 out of 42), alteration in expression was confirmed, indicating the reliability of the HDCA for transcription profiling. DNA damage and stress-responsive genes encoding, for instance transcription factors (myb protein and WRKY1), the ribonucleotide reductase small subunit (RNR2), thymidine kinase (TK), an AAA-type ATPase, the small subunit of a DNA polymerase and a calmodulin-like protein were found to be strongly upregulated. Also, several genes involved in cell cycle regulation revealed significant alteration in transcription, as detected by real-time PCR analysis, suggesting disturbance of cell cycle progression by mutagen treatment.