Tolerance of Arabidopsis to thrip feeding

We analyzed the interaction between Arabidopsis and western flower thrips (Frankliniella occidentalis), which are one of the most serious insect pests of cultivated plants. A total of 1.2K potential biotic and abiotic stress-related genes were selected from the genes covered by the Arabidopsis 7K array (RIKEN, Japan) and Arabidopsis oligo microarray (Agilent Technologies, USA) for this study. The 21- day-old plants were feeded by western flower thrips in an acryl cylinder chamber with air ventilation windows covered with a fine mesh. Leaves were harvested several time after the feeding. Our results indicate that JA plays an important role in Arabidopsis in terms of response to, and tolerance against, thrip feeding. A total of 1.2K potential stress-related genes that encode known or putative protein were selected for this study from the genes covered by Arabidopsis 7K array (RIKEN, Japan) and Arabidopsis oligo microarray (Agilent technologies, USA), which these genes include biotic and abiotic stress-inducible genes. Complementary DNA was synthesized and labeled with either Cy5 for the treated samples or Cy3 the untreated plants grown in parallel. No dye swaps were carried out.The microarrays were spotted using the microarray stamping machine (model SpotArray24; PerkinElmer, Wellesley, MA, USA). Hybridization was carried out in our laboratory, and hybridized chips were scanned on a ScanArray Lite scanner (PerkinElmer, Wellesley, MA, USA) and quantified using ScanArray Express ver.3 software. We calculated the median of the pixel intensities for each spot. time course: 2, 5, 10, 24 hours