title: Microarray: gateway to unravel the mystery of abiotic stresses in plants.
abstract: Environmental factors, such as drought, salinity, extreme temperature, ozone poisoning, metal toxicity etc., significantly affect crops. To study these factors and to design a possible remedy, biological experimental data concerning these crops requires the quantification of gene expression and comparative analyses at high throughput level. Development of microarrays is the platform to study the differential expression profiling of the targeted genes. This technology can be applied to gene expression studies, ranging from individual genes to whole genome level. It is now possible to perform the quantification of the differential expression of genes on a glass slide in a single experiment. This review documents recently published reports on the use of microarrays for the identification of genes in different plant species playing their role in different cellular networks under abiotic stresses. The regulation pattern of differentially-expressed genes, individually or in group form, may help us to study different pathways and functions at the cellular and molecular level. These studies can provide us with a lot of useful information to unravel the mystery of abiotic stresses in important crop plants.
authors.affiliation: Centre of Excellence in Molecular Biology, University of the Punjab Lahore, 87 W Canal Bank Road, Thokar Niaz Baig, Lahore, 53700, Pakistan.
authors.forename: Ambreen
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Gul
authors.affiliation: Centre of Excellence in Molecular Biology, University of the Punjab Lahore, 87 W Canal Bank Road, Thokar Niaz Baig, Lahore, 53700, Pakistan.
authors.forename: Ammara
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Ahad
authors.affiliation: Centre of Excellence in Molecular Biology, University of the Punjab Lahore, 87 W Canal Bank Road, Thokar Niaz Baig, Lahore, 53700, Pakistan.
authors.forename: Sidra
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Akhtar
authors.affiliation: Centre of Excellence in Molecular Biology, University of the Punjab Lahore, 87 W Canal Bank Road, Thokar Niaz Baig, Lahore, 53700, Pakistan.
authors.forename: Zarnab
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Ahmad
authors.affiliation: Centre of Excellence in Molecular Biology, University of the Punjab Lahore, 87 W Canal Bank Road, Thokar Niaz Baig, Lahore, 53700, Pakistan. bushra.cemb@pu.edu.pk.
authors.forename: Bushra
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Rashid
authors.affiliation: Centre of Excellence in Molecular Biology, University of the Punjab Lahore, 87 W Canal Bank Road, Thokar Niaz Baig, Lahore, 53700, Pakistan.
authors.forename: Tayyab
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Husnain
mesh_terms: D018556:Crops, Agricultural / Q000235:genetics / Q000254:growth & development; D020869:Gene Expression Profiling / Q000379:methods*; D018506:Gene Expression Regulation, Plant; D017343:Genes, Plant; D020411:Oligonucleotide Array Sequence Analysis / Q000379:methods*; D013312:Stress, Physiological
keywords: Abiotic stresses; Crop plants; Gene expression; Microarray; Plant genome