Comparative gene expression analysis in Artemisia annua (cv. CIM-Arogya) seedling and mature leaf tissues having contrasting artemisinin content

Artemisia annua is known to produce the antimalarial phytomolecule artemisinin. The seedling and mature leaf of the plant represent two contrasting tissues in terms of their artemisinin content. The major objective of the present study was to use a small-scale (750 target genes) microarray of A. annua for identification of genes that are differentially expressed in the seedling and mature leaf tissues of the plant. The experiment aimed at studying the expression levels of target genes in A. annua. A dual channel procedure with dye-swap arrangement was adopted in the study on two samples - Seedling and Mature Leaf. The interest was to compare the expression levels of target genes in Seedling against Mature Leaf. The expression data was generated on 1,569 probes, in which each probe was replicated twice.