System-wide molecular evidence for phenotypic buffering in Arabidopsis

Nat Genet. 2009 Feb;41(2):166-7. doi: 10.1038/ng.308. Epub 2009 Jan 25.

Abstract

We profiled 162 lines of Arabidopsis for variation in transcript, protein and metabolite abundance using mRNA microarrays, two-dimensional polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis, gas chromatography time-of-flight mass spectrometry, liquid chromatography quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometry, and proton nuclear magnetic resonance. We added all publicly available phenotypic data from the same lines and mapped quantitative trait loci (QTL) for 40,580 molecular and 139 phenotypic traits. We found six QTL hot spots with major, system-wide effects, suggesting there are six breakpoints in a system otherwise buffered against many of the 500,000 SNPs.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Arabidopsis / genetics*
  • Biomarkers / analysis
  • Chromosome Mapping*
  • Gene Expression Profiling*
  • Genome, Plant
  • Phenotype
  • Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide
  • Quantitative Trait Loci

Substances

  • Biomarkers