Gene expression analysis of model plant in response to citrus leprosis

Abstract

Citrus leprosis is considered one of the main diseases in Brazilian citrus industry. Even though the disease has been known for decades and there are resistant or highly tolerant varieties, Citrus sinensis (sweet orange), the main cultivated specie in Brazil, is highly susceptible. Furthermore, the molecular mechanisms involved in plant-virus interaction are not yet known and could help either the understanding of the interaction or the search for alternatives to disease control. Hence, recent efforts of our group have tried to elucidate the global responses of resistant and susceptible citrus genotypes to Citrus leprosis virus C (CiLV-C) through microarray analysis. Even though interesting results were obtained, they were quite limited due to the restricted knowledge of the interactions between citrus and its pathogens and also due to the recent sequencing of citrus genome, still at 0.9 stage. Therefore, it would be interesting to perform similar study in a host whose genome has been completely sequenced and curated and largely used as model plant for pathogen interaction studies, such as Arabidopsis thaliana. Since we identified this specie as a host for CILV-C recently, the present study proposes the evaluation of expression of genes involved in defense pathways in Arabidopsis in response to CiLV-C infection. (AU)