Transcriptome of mature Arabidopsis thaliana crown galls

This study describes physiological changes, morphological adaptations and the regulation of pathogen defense responses in Arabidopsis crown galls. Crown gall development was induced on intact plants under most natural conditions with Agrobacterium tumefaciens. Differential gene expression and the metabolite pattern was determined by comparing crown galls with mock-inoculated inflorescence stalk segments of the same age. The bases of Arabidopsis thaliana (WS-2) inflorescence stalks were wounded and immediately inoculated with Agrobacterium tumefaciens, strain C58, or mock-inoculated. Plants were cultivated for another 35 days under short day conditions (8 h illumination, 16 h darkness). Gene expression values of four independent experiments of treated material (C58 35dpi 1 to 4) were compared with four non-treated samples of the same age (reference 35dpi 1 to 4). Differential gene expression was analyzed by applying the LIMMA package (Linear Models for Microarray Data; Smyth, G.K. (2004) Applic. Genet. Mol. Biol. 3, Article 3; http://www.bepress.com/sagmb/vol3/iss1/art3/).