Gene expression profiling of rice seedlings in response to glutamine treatment

Abstract

Glutamine, the most abundant free amino acid in humans (Curi et al., 2007 [1]), has many functions. In addition to protein, amino acid, and nucleic acid biosynthesis, glutamine also regulates the expression of genes related to metabolism, cell defense, and signal transduction in humans (Curi et al., 2007 [1]; Brasse-Lagnel et al., 2009 [2]). Glutamine is also one of the major forms of nitrogen in rice (Fukumorita and Chino, 1982 [3]). In addition to metabolic and nutritional effects, glutamine may function as a signaling molecule to regulate gene expression in plants. To this end, we used microarray analysis to identify genes that are rapidly induced by 2.5 mM glutamine in rice roots. The results revealed that glutamine induced the expression of at least 35 genes involved in metabolism, transport, signal transduction, and stress responses within 30 min (Kan et al., 2015 [4]). Here, we provide the details of the experimental procedure associated with our microarray data deposited in NCBI's Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO ID: GSE56770).