1. Front Cover.cdr - CORE

A B S T R A C T B O O K – A B S T R A C T S O F P O S T E R S
the normalization of transcript data, usually done by reference genes that show stable expression in the
analyzed tissue or treatment. It has been shown that many commonly used reference genes are not stable
expressed in several developmental states i.e. seed germination. During seed germination huge
transcriptional changes take place, complicating the identification of reference genes. Therefore we carried
out a cross-species approach with Arabidopsis thaliana, Lepidium sativum and Brassica napus using seeds as
challenging tissue to identify family-wide reference genes for Brassicaceae seed germination and
maturation. We used transcriptome data of Lepidium sativum seed tissues and Arabidopsis thaliana whole
seeds to select candidate reference genes and verified their stability with qRT-PCR in both species. Further
analysis of transcriptome data from Brassica napus and Arabidopsis thaliana seeds during maturation
confirmed that the majority of the new reference genes are also stable expressed during seed maturation.
Our cross-species Brassicaceae case-study can therefore be used as a guideline to identify reference genes
for other families or other demanding tissues and treatments.
COMPUTATIONAL ANALYSIS OF GENES INVOLVED IN NITRIC OXIDE, SA AND JA
SIGNALING IN RICE UNDER CADMIUM STRESS
Indra Singh 1 , Neetu Singh Yadav 1 , Pragat Agrawal 1 , Kavita Shah 2
1 Bioinformatics Division, Mahila Mahavidyalaya, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, India
2 Institute of Environment & Sustainable Development, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, India
E-mail: singhanjanabhu@gmail.com
Complete genome availability of rice provides for study of candidate genes in nitric oxide, jasmonic acid and
salicylic acid signalling pathway in plants. We examined in silico, the genes involved and the point of
convergence of these signalling pathways under cadmium stress in rice. In NO pathway nitrate reductase
and nitric oxide synthase are enzymes that catalyze a balanced production of NO in plants under abiotic
stress. Retrieval of NR and NOS gene sequence from rice and detection of their homologs, gene ontology
studies and homology modelling provided an insight into the protein products and their function in stress
signalling pathway in rice. In SA-JA interacting pathways, 13 genes were found to be expressed that either
activate (EDS-1, R-gene, CPR-6, PAD-4, EDS-5, SID-2, TGA-2, SFD-1, PR) or inhibit (CPR-5, NPR-1, SNI-1, SSI-2)
the effect of abiotic stress in A. thaliana. Out of these, 7 gene sequences were obtained upon similarity
search from O. sativa and are yet not annotated. Using various computational parameters and structural
data, these genes were annotated and their functions predicted. Results suggest genes, involved in NO, SA
and JA pathways are crosslinking in O. sativa having synergistic as well as antagonistic effects in rice under
cadmium toxicity.
PLANT PEROXISOMAL PARALOGUES OF GLYCOLATE OXIDASE POSSESS DIFFERENT
BIOCHEMICAL PROPERTIES AND PHYSIOLOGICAL FUNCTIONS
Anke Kuhn, Martin K.M. Engqvist, Nils Jaspert, Veronica G. Maurino
Department of Botany, Cologne Biocenter, University of Cologne, Cologne, Germany
E-mail: akuhn1@uni-koeln.de
During photorespiration glycolate oxidase (GO) catalyses the oxidation of glycolate into equimolar amounts
of glyoxylate and H2O2 in the peroxisomes. The Arabidopsis genome contains a family composed of five GO
homologs. Two close related genes, GO1 and GO2, are highly expressed in photosynthetic tissues and
support photorespiration. A third paralogue, GO3, showed lower expression in autotroph tissues and the
two more distant paralogues showed high homology to human long- and medium-chain 2-hydroxyacid
oxidases (HAOX) and are thus called HAOX1 and 2. In silico analysis of differing active site residues
suggested different substrate specificities for the different homologues. In this work, the five Arabidopsis
GO homologues were expressed as recombinant protein and characterized at the biochemical level. The
results obtained together with the isolation and characterization of knock-out mutants allowed to propose
that GOX3 would function as a lactate oxidase during recovery of hypoxia and that HAOX 1 and -2 would
have a role principally during seed development.
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