An extensive (co-)expression analysis tool for the cytochrome P450 superfamily in Arabidopsis thaliana
Date
2008-04-23
Authors
Ehlting, Jürgen
Sauveplane, Vincent
Olry, Alexandre
Ginglinger, Jean-François
Provart, Nicholas J
Werck-Reichhart, Danièle
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
BioMed Central
Abstract
Background: Sequencing of the first plant genomes has revealed that cytochromes P450 have
evolved to become the largest family of enzymes in secondary metabolism. The proportion of P450
enzymes with characterized biochemical function(s) is however very small. If P450 diversification
mirrors evolution of chemical diversity, this points to an unexpectedly poor understanding of plant
metabolism. We assumed that extensive analysis of gene expression might guide towards the
function of P450 enzymes, and highlight overlooked aspects of plant metabolism.
Results: We have created a comprehensive database, 'CYPedia', describing P450 gene expression
in four data sets: organs and tissues, stress response, hormone response, and mutants of Arabidopsis
thaliana, based on public Affymetrix ATH1 microarray expression data. P450 expression was then
combined with the expression of 4,130 re-annotated genes, predicted to act in plant metabolism,
for co-expression analyses. Based on the annotation of co-expressed genes from diverse pathway
annotation databases, co-expressed pathways were identified. Predictions were validated for most
P450s with known functions. As examples, co-expression results for P450s related to plastidial
functions/photosynthesis, and to phenylpropanoid, triterpenoid and jasmonate metabolism are
highlighted here.
Conclusion: The large scale hypothesis generation tools presented here provide leads to new
pathways, unexpected functions, and regulatory networks for many P450s in plant metabolism.
These can now be exploited by the community to validate the proposed functions experimentally
using reverse genetics, biochemistry, and metabolic profiling.
Description
BioMed Central
Keywords
Citation
Ehlting et al.: An extensive (co-)expression analysis tool for the cytochrome P450 superfamily in Arabidopsis thaliana. BMC Plant Biology 2008, 8 :47