Plant & Animal Genomes XIV Conference

January 14-18, 2006
Town & Country Convention Center
San Diego, CA

Functional Genomics Of Abiotic Stress In The Brassicaeae Family

Isobel Parkin¹ , Sue Abrams² , Adrian Cutler² , Allen Good³ , Larry Gusta⁴ , George Haughn⁵ , Rob Hill⁶ , Maurice Moloney⁷ , Doug Muench⁷ , Jean Rioval⁸ , Gregory Taylor³ , Randall Weselake⁹

¹  Saskatoon Research Centre Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada 107 Science Place Saskatoon, SK, S7N OX2, Canada

²  Plant Biotechnology Institute National Research Council of Canada 110 Gymnasium Place Saskatoon SK S7N 0W9, Canada

³  Dept of Biological Sciences, Faculty of Science, G-425 Biological Sciences Building, University of Alberta Edmonton, AB T6G 2E9, Canada

⁴  Crop Development Centre 51 Campus Drive University of Saskatchewan Saskatoon, SK S7N 5A8, Canada

⁵  Botany Department, University of British Columbia 6270 University Blvd, Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z4, Canada

⁶  Department of Plant Science The University of Manitoba Winnipeg, MB R3T2N2, Canada

⁷  Department of Biological Sciences University of Calgary 2500 University Dr. NW Calgary, AB T2N 1N4, Canada

⁸  Université de Montréal IRBV 4101 Rue Sherbrooke est Montréal, QC H1X 2B2, Canada

⁹  Department of Agricultural, Food and Nutritional Science 4-10M Agriculture/Forestry Centre Edmonton, AB T6GP5, Canada

Tolerant plants cope with exposure to abiotic stresses through adaptive mechanisms controlled by complex inter-connecting regulatory pathways, which result in the production of a wide array of protective biological products. The multifaceted nature of the problem is scientifically challenging but ideally suited to the application of genomics technologies. The Brassica group of the Genome Prairie funded project, Functional Genomics of Abiotic Stress, has used a combination of genomics tools to generate a catalogue of genes, which respond to cold, drought and phosphate deficiency. Genes both unique to specific stresses and common to more than one stress have been identified, many of which predate the evolution of the monocot-dicot lineages. A combination of gene expression technologies have been used to identify stress-induced changes in the transcriptome of Brassica napus, Arabidopsis and a wild crucifer, Thlaspi arvense. Complementary proteomics studies have assayed changes in the whole cellular proteome in response to stress and have also targeted novel collections of proteins, potentially key to abiotic stress, such as those of the cytoskeleton, the root extra-cellular matrix and endoplasmic reticulum. The functional analysis of candidate genes is proceeding through knock-out and over-expression studies in Arabidopsis and Brassica species. Bioinformatics tools are being implemented to allow researchers to screen the information developed through the project for their own genes of interest.