Sugar sweet springtails: On the transcriptional response of Folsomia candida (Collembola) towards desiccation stress

Folsomia candida (Collembola) is able to survive dryer conditions by absorbing water vapour from its surroundings. To unravel the genomic responses underlying this intriguing water-absorption mechanism, we exposed the species to 98.2% Relative Humidity (eight, 27, 53 and 174 hours respectively) and subjected it to microarray based transcription profiling. About twenty-five 25-27 day old animals were placed in plastic containers that had a Relative Humidity of 98.2% (desiccated groups; n=16) or 100% RH (reference groups; n=16). After 8, 27, 53 and 174 hours four reference and four desiccation treated groups were snap-frozen (in liquid nitrogen) and stored at –80 °C until further analysis. Total RNA was obtained for each of the 32 samples. 500ng total RNA was labelled with the Agilent Low-Input Fluorescent Linear Amplification Kit. A pair-wise reference design was applied, implying that samples originating from desiccated groups were hybridized onto arrays with samples from reference groups that were exposed for the same duration; 8, 27, 53 or 174 hours). Dyes were swapped over the biological replicates.