Small RNA and transcriptome deep sequencing proffers insight into floral gene regulation in Rosa cultivars.

Background: Roses (Rosa sp.), which belong to the family Rosaceae, are the most economically important ornamental plants--making up 30% of the floriculture market. However, given high demand for roses, rose breeding programs are limited in molecular resources which can greatly enhance and speed breeding efforts.

Screening of tissue-specific genes and promoters in tomato by comparing genome wide expression profiles of Arabidopsis orthologues.

Constitutive overexpression of transgenes occasionally interferes with normal growth and developmental processes in plants. Thus, the development of tissue-specific promoters that drive transgene expression has become agriculturally important. To identify tomato tissue-specific promoters, tissue-specific genes were screened using a series of in silico-based and experimental procedures, including genome-wide orthologue searches of tomato and Arabidopsis databases, isolation of tissue-specific candidates using an Arabidopsis microarray database, and validation of tissue specificity by reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) analysis and promoter assay.

Silencing of SlFTR-c, the catalytic subunit of ferredoxin:thioredoxin reductase, induces pathogenesis-related genes and pathogen resistance in tomato plants.

As a heterodimeric protein, ferredoxin:thioredoxin reductase (FTR) catalyses the light-dependant activation of several photosynthetic enzymes. The active site of the catalytic subunit of FTR contains a redox-active disulfide and a [4Fe-4S] center. We isolated the catalytic subunit gene of FTR, designated SlFTR-c, from tomato (Solanum lycopersicum L.