title: Identification of candidate genes important for frost tolerance in Festuca pratensis Huds. by transcriptional profiling.
abstract: Studies of differential gene expression between cold acclimated (CA) and non-cold acclimated (NA) plants yield insight into how plants prepare for cold stress at the transcriptional level. Furthermore genes involved in the cold acclimation process are good candidate loci for genetic variation in frost tolerance and winter survival. In this study we combine different approaches to try to decode the genetics of cold acclimation and frost tolerance in meadow fescue (Festuca pratensis Huds). An EST library of cold acclimation responsive genes was established by suppression subtractive hybridization (SSH), and a microarray experiment was used to identify gene expression differences between high and low frost tolerance genotypes in response to cold acclimation. Many genes known to be involved in CA in other species were confirmed to be involved in CA in F. pratensis, however, 18% of the ESTs did not show significant homology to any database proteins. Seven genes were found to be differentially expressed (>2-fold) between high and low frost tolerance genotypes. Two of these genes, FpQM and FpTPT, represent interesting candidate genes for frost tolerance in perennial forage grasses.
authors.affiliation: Norwegian University of Life Sciences, Department of Plant and Environmental Sciences, N-1432 Ås, Norway. heidi.rudi@umb.no
authors.forename: Heidi
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Rudi
authors.forename: Simen R
authors.initials: SR
authors.lastname: Sandve
authors.forename: Lars M
authors.initials: LM
authors.lastname: Opseth
authors.forename: Arild
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Larsen
authors.forename: Odd Arne
authors.initials: OA
authors.lastname: Rognli
mesh_terms: D003080:Cold Temperature; D020224:Expressed Sequence Tags; D031751:Festuca / Q000235:genetics* / Q000502:physiology*; D018506:Gene Expression Regulation, Plant / Q000235:genetics / Q000502:physiology