A whole-genome microarray study of Arabidopsis thaliana semisolid callus cultures exposed to microgravity and nonmicrogravity related spaceflight conditions for 5 days on board of Shenzhou 8.

The Simbox mission was the first joint space project between Germany and China in November 2011. Eleven-day-old Arabidopsis thaliana wild type semisolid callus cultures were integrated into fully automated plant cultivation containers and exposed to spaceflight conditions within the Simbox hardware on board of the spacecraft Shenzhou 8. The related ground experiment was conducted under similar conditions. The use of an in-flight centrifuge provided a 1 g gravitational field in space. The cells were metabolically quenched after 5 days via RNAlater injection. The impact on the Arabidopsis transcriptome was investigated by means of whole-genome gene expression analysis. The results show a major impact of nonmicrogravity related spaceflight conditions. Genes that were significantly altered in transcript abundance are mainly involved in protein phosphorylation and MAPK cascade-related signaling processes, as well as in the cellular defense and stress responses. In contrast to short-term effects of microgravity (seconds, minutes), this mission identified only minor changes after 5 days of microgravity. These concerned genes coding for proteins involved in the plastid-associated translation machinery, mitochondrial electron transport, and energy production.

OakContigDF159.1, a reference library for studying differential gene expression in Quercus robur during controlled biotic interactions: use for quantitative transcriptomic profiling of oak roots in ectomycorrhizal symbiosis.

Oaks (Quercus spp.), which are major forest trees in the northern hemisphere, host many biotic interactions, but molecular investigation of these interactions is limited by fragmentary genome data. To date, only 75 oak expressed sequence tags (ESTs) have been characterized in ectomycorrhizal (EM) symbioses. We synthesized seven beneficial and detrimental biotic interactions between microorganisms and animals and a clone (DF159) of Quercus robur. Sixteen 454 and eight Illumina cDNA libraries from leaves and roots were prepared and merged to establish a reference for RNA-Seq transcriptomic analysis of oak EMs with Piloderma croceum. Using the Mimicking Intelligent Read Assembly (MIRA) and Trinity assembler, the OakContigDF159.1 hybrid assembly, containing 65 712 contigs with a mean length of 1003 bp, was constructed, giving broad coverage of metabolic pathways. This allowed us to identify 3018 oak contigs that were differentially expressed in EMs, with genes encoding proline-rich cell wall proteins and ethylene signalling-related transcription factors showing up-regulation while auxin and defence-related genes were down-regulated. In addition to the first report of remorin expression in EMs, the extensive coverage provided by the study permitted detection of differential regulation within large gene families (nitrogen, phosphorus and sugar transporters, aquaporins). This might indicate specific mechanisms of genome regulation in oak EMs compared with other trees.