Platform of Hot Pepper Stress Genomics： Indentification of Stress Inducible Genes in Hot Pepper (Capsicum annuum L.) Using cDNA Microarray Analysis

Although plants have evolved to possess various defense mechanisms from local biotic and abiotic stressors, most of yield loss is caused by theses stressors. Recent studies have revealed that several different stress responsive reactions are inter-networking. Therefore, the identification and dissection of stress responsive genes is an essential and first step towards understanding of the global defense mechanism in response to various stressors. For this purpose, we applied cDNA microarray analysis, because it has powerful ability to monitor the global gene expression in a specific situation. To date, more than 10,000 non-redundant genes were identified from seven different cDNA libraries and deposited in our EST database (http://plant.pdrs.re.kr/ks200201/pepper.html). For this study, we have built 5K cDNA microarray containing 4,685 unigene clones from three different cDNA libraries. Monitoring of gene expression profiles of hot pepper interactions with biotic stress, abiotic stresses and chemical treatments will be presented. Although this work shows expression profiling at the sub-genomic level, this could be a good starting point to understand the complexity of global defense mechanism in hot pepper.