Transcriptome profiling of soybean root tips

Abstract

Soybean (Glycine max L.), a major legume crop, is important to human nutrition and is a source of animal feed. Similar to many legumes, a key feature of the soybean is its symbiotic association with soil bacteria that fix atmospheric nitrogen. However, knowledge of the gene expression of its root system, particularly the root meristematic region, is limited. Here, we have addressed this by investigating the gene expression profile of the soybean root tip, using soybean Affymetrix chips containing 37500 probe sets (Affymetrix Inc.) and have compared this expression profile with that of the nonmeristematic tissue. We identified a total of 5012 upregulated and 4136 downregulated genes in the so..