Ozone-induced oxidative stress response in Arabidopsis: transcription profiling by microarray approach

High ozone concentration generates oxidative stress in plants. To investigate the detailed transcriptional regulation of Arabidopsis thaliana genes encoding antioxidant enzymes upon ozone stress, we performed a microarray analysis using Affymetrix GeneChip technology. Our transcription profiling revealed a differential expression equal or greater than 2-fold change for 2385 genes (at confidence 99%) in response to 350 ppb ozone dose after 3 and 6 hours of treatment. Among these, we chose 38 genes to be oxidative stress related in ozone treatment: 29 of them were 2 times up-regulated and 9 were shown to be down-regulated in at least one of the time points. Our study revealed a new transcription pattern for catalase genes and showed the first detailed transcriptional analysis of phenylopropanoid-related genes in ozone stress conditions.