Project description:Arabidopsis thaliana is a glycophyte with a low salt tolerance, while Eutrema is a halophyte with a very high salt tolerance. To elucidate the transcriptional basis of this difference, we performed hydroponis culture experiments where we grew plants under control conditions (25 mM NaCl) or under salt stress (200 mM NaCl for both species, 500 mM for Eutrema). Salt concentration was increased for the stress treatments by increments of 50 mM per day (25 mM on the first day). Plants were grown at the final NaCl concentration for an additional week, when rosettes were harvested for RNA isolation.Expression patterns were compared between treatments and between species. In total, 15 samples were hybridized. They were derived from three independent biological experiments (replicate_1 to replicate_3). Controlds were grown at 25 mM NaCl, salt stressed plants at either 200 mM NaCl or 500 mM NaCl.
Project description:Chinese and Philippine strains of the blood fluke Schistosoma japonicum present clear and distinctive phenotypes in areas of fecundity, pathology, drug sensitivity and immunology. Despite these differences large scale sequencing efforts have focused solely on Chinese mainland strain of the parasite. We have undertaken a comparative genomic hybridisation (CGH) approach to highlight some of the structural differences in the genome of two of the major geographical isolates of S. japonicum. We identified seven distinct regions of the S. japonicum genome that present differential CGH between Chinese and Philippine strains of the blood fluke Schistosoma japonicum, representing either deletion or duplication regions in the Philippine strain. Within these regions, genes that may be related to phenotypical differences are identified and discussed.