Transcriptional responses of Arabidopsis thaliana to chewing and sucking insect herbivores.

We tested the hypothesis that Arabidopsis can recognize and respond differentially to insect species at the transcriptional level using a genome wide microarray. Transcriptional reprogramming was characterized using co-expression analysis in damaged and undamaged leaves at two times in response to mechanical wounding and four insect species. In all, 2778 (10.

Roles for jasmonate- and ethylene-induced transcription factors in the ability of Arabidopsis to respond differentially to damage caused by two insect herbivores.

Plant responses to insects and wounding involve substantial transcriptional reprogramming that integrates hormonal, metabolic, and physiological events. The ability to respond differentially to various stresses, including wounding, generally involves hormone signaling and trans-acting regulatory factors. Evidence of the importance of transcription factors (TFs) in responses to insects is also accumulating.

PhenoPhyte: a flexible affordable method to quantify 2D phenotypes from imagery.

Background: Accurate characterization of complex plant phenotypes is critical to assigning biological functions to genes through forward or reverse genetics. It can also be vital in determining the effect of a treatment, genotype, or environmental condition on plant growth or susceptibility to insects or pathogens. Although techniques for characterizing complex phenotypes have been developed, most are not cost effective or are too imprecise or subjective to reliably differentiate subtler differences in complex traits like growth, color change, or disease resistance.

Measuring 'normalcy' in plant gene expression after herbivore attack.

Plants make drastic changes to their transcriptome to appropriately respond to environmental change, and the regulation of genes that are specific to abiotic and biotic stresses is a key to plant survival. The coordination of defence gene transcription is often coupled with significant adjustments in the levels of expression of primary metabolic and structural genes to relocate resources, repair damage and/or induce senescence. This complicates the process of finding suitable 'housekeeping' or reference genes to use in measurements of gene expression by real-time reverse transcription (RT-PCR) in response to herbivore attack.