Global diurnal and circadian transcriptome analysis of Arabidopsis thaliana by RNA-Seq

ANDRÉS ROMANOWSKI; ESTEFANÍA MANCINI; SABRINA E. SANCHEZ; MATIAS RUGNONE; MARCELO J. YANOVSKY

Foz do Iguaçu

Congreso; 11th International Congress of Plant Molecular Biology; 2015

Bi-national Argentine-Brazil Organizing Committee of the IPMB

Arabidopsis thaliana is a widely used model organism in plant biology, development and genetics research. It was the first dicot plant to have its genome sequenced and was key to understanding the biology of several plant traits, such as flowering, light sensing and photomorphogenesis. Many circadian rhythms have been described in this organism (i.e.: leaf movement, stomatal opening, hypocotyl elongation, among others) and the molecular clockwork mechanism behind these rhythms is well known.In recent years, advances in the field of RNA sequencing have revolutionized many fields of scientific research, including but not limited to cancer, metabolism, aging and molecular biology. RNA-Seq allows for global transcriptome profiling using deep sequencing technologies, providing far more precise measurement of levels of transcripts and their isoforms than other methods.In this work we have applied RNA-Seq to profile the global circadian transcriptome of A. thaliana Col-0 in LD 12h : 12 h conditions (LD, light-dark, and constant temperature, 20ºC) and LL conditions (LL, constant light, and constant temperature, 20ºC). With this approach we have been able to quantify expression levels of the whole genome and particularly of circadian, flowering and splicing related genes, as well as studying alternative splicing patterns. Taken together, these results show that RNA-Seq is a very powerful tool to study circadian gene expression and alternative splicing events.