Studies of autophagy pathway during submergence in Arabidopsis thaliana

Autophagy involves massive degradation of intracellular components and functions as a conserved system that helps cells to adapt to adverse conditions. In Arabidopsis thaliana, submergence induces the transcription of autophagy-related (ATG) genes and the formation of autophagosomes. To study the role of autophagy during submergence, we performed transcriptome analysis with atg5, an autophagy-defective mutant, under submergence conditions. Our data showed that submergence changed the expression profile of DEG in the atg5 versus wild-type. Whole Arabidopsis plants (4-week-old) were gently submerged at depths of 10 cm beneath the water surface under normal light/dark cycle condition. Plant samples for microarray were collected after 0 h or 48 h submergence treatment.