The protective role of silicon in the Arabidopsis-powdery mildew pathosystem.

ABSTRACT: The role and essentiality of silicon (Si) in plant biology have been debated for >150 years despite numerous reports describing its beneficial properties. To obtain unique insights regarding the effect of Si on plants, we performed a complete transcriptome analysis of both control and powdery mildew-stressed Arabidopsis plants, with or without Si application, using a 44K microarray. Surprisingly, the expression of all but two genes was unaffected by Si in control plants, a result contradicting reports of a possible direct effect of Si as a fertilizer. In contrast, inoculation of plants, treated or not with Si, altered the expression of a set of nearly 4,000 genes. After functional categorization, many of the up-regulated genes were defense-related, whereas a large proportion of down-regula

SUBMITTER: Fauteux F 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC1859967 | biostudies-literature | 2006 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature