Transcriptome differences between two vitamin C-deficient mutants and wild type. Arabidopsis thaliana

The Arabidopsis mutant vtc2 is vitamin C-deficient and high light sensitive (Mueller-Moule et al., 2002. Plant Physiol 128: 970-977; Mueller-Moule et al., 2003. Plant Physiol 133: 748-760). Even though the VTC2 gene has been cloned (Jander et al., 2002. Plant Physiol 129: 440-450), its function is still unclear. The goal of this experiment is to learn more about the function of the VTC2 gene by determining differences in the transcriptomes of wild type and the vtc2-1 mutant. In order to differentiate between VTC2 gene-specific differences and vitamin C-induced differences, a second vitamin C-deficient mutant vtc1-1 (Conklin et al., 1996. PNAS 93: 9970-9974) is included in the experiment. The plants will be grown on agar plates in a growth chamber with a 16 hour light (about 40 umol photons m(-2)s(-1))/8 hour dark regime at 20C for 14 days to stage 1.04. Whole plants will be collected and total RNA will be isolated using the Qiagen Rneasy plant mini kit (Qiagen, Hilden, Germany). Overall design: 9 samples were used in this experiment.