Expression data from tocopherol deficient seedlings of Arabidopsis. Arabidopsis thaliana

Tocopherols (Vitamin E) are lipophilic antioxidants that are synthesized by all plants and are particularly abundant in seeds. Two tocopherol deficient mutant loci were used to examine how tocopherol deficiency impacts global gene expression during the critical peroid of germination and early seedling development when tocopherols are essential. vte1 lacks all tocopherols, but accumulates the tocopherol pathway intermediate DMPBQ,. vte2 which lacks all tocopherols and pathway intermediates. We used microarrays to examine the global gene expression in early seedlings and identify distinct classes of genes whose expression is affected by tocopherol deficient mutants vte1 and vte2. Keywords: genetic modification Overall design: Arabidopsis seedlings were grown on media containing MS salts at 22C and RNA was extracted from 1 (1D)and 3 (3D)day old seedlings following cold treatment to break dormancy and synchronize germination (5 days at 6C) . We sought to compare the two tocopherol deficient mutants vte1 (VTE1) and vte2 (VTE2) with each other and the corresponding wild-type background Columbia-0 (COL).