Cadmium (Cd), a non-essential metal, is a kind of toxic heavy metal to life, which can accumulate in rice tissues including seeds, thus posing a risk to human health through food chain. To investigate the molecular mechanisms of rice response to Cd exposure, suppression subtractive hybridization and mirror orientation selection were used to compare gene expression profiles in seedling roots of Cd-exposed and control (unexposed) rice plants (Oryza sativa L., Nipponbare). Approximately 1700 positive clones, with insertions ranging from 250 to 1300 bp, were identified through reverse cDNA microarray analysis. Gene expression was further confirmed by real time RT-PCR. A number of differentially expressed genes were found in Cd-exposed rice roots, including 28 up-regulated genes and 19 down-regulated genes. They were found to be involved in diverse biological processes, such as metabolism, stress response, ion transport and binding, protein structure and synthesis, as well as signal transduction. Notably a number of known functional genes were identified encoding membrane proteins and stress-related proteins such as heat shock proteins, monosaccharide transporters, CBL-interacting serine/threonine-protein kinases and metal tolerance proteins. The cDNAs isolated in this study contribute to our understanding of genes and the biochemical pathways that may play a key role in the response of plants to metal exposure in the environment.
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