Gene Expression in Cold-stressed Barley as Detected by Microarray Analysis

Abstract
Abiotic stresses, such as drought, cold or high salt, influence cereals plant growth, productivity and quality (e.g. freezing and dehydration represent osmotic stress and destabilize the cell membranes (Wang, 2003)). When plants are exposed to these stresses, they pass through physiological and biochemical adaptations.

Variety of genes are expressed under adverse conditions in plants (Thomashow, 1999). During cold stress, the expression of many genes is up- or down-regulated. Advantage of microarray technology is that provide high throughput tool for analyzing a great number of genes.

Goal of this work is to find genes in spring and winter barleys that are influenced by cold stress and to analyze their expression profiles during stress. A few of experiments reported influence of temperature on the leaves and crown nodes, that is why we focus our study also on crown nodes by microarray technology.