A polyadenylation factor subunit implicated in regulating oxidative stress responses in Arabidopsis thaliana

The oxt6 mutant is an oxidative stress-tolerant Arabidopsis mutant that is deficient in a polyadenylation factor subunit. Expression analysis suggests that impaired poly(A) site choice is responsible for the stress-tolerant phenotype. We used microarrays to understand the link between the polyadenylation defect and stress tolerance. Keywords: mutant, wild-type, complemented line comparison Arabidopsis plants (the wild-type, oxt6 mutant, and two independent oxt6 transformants each carrying a gene encoding just the smaller of the two At1g30460-encoded proteins) were seeded and grown in soil. Plants were harvested for RNA isolation after 30 days; for this, six samples derived from 10-15 plants were prepared for each line. Ten samples were selected for study – three wild-type, three oxt6, and two from each of the complemented lines. Analysis of independent complemented plants minimizes the possible effects that may arise due to T-DNA insertion.