An Update on Generation and Use of Microarray Resources for Soybean

Both spotted cDNAs and 70-mer oligo arrays are available for global gene expression analyses and represent over 36,000 members of the soybean (Glycine max) unigene set. The cDNA resources have been described (Vodkin et al., 2004; http://soybeangenomics.cropsci.uiuc.edu) and used to investigate many biological questions including the processes of somatic embryogenesis (Thibaud-Nissen et al., 2003), soybean seed development and germination (Jones et al., 2006; Gonzalez et al., 2006), and the responses to pathogen challenge (Zho et al., 2005) and to elevated carbon atmospheric conditions (Ainsworth et al., 2006). In addition, they proved useful for identifying single gene differences between isogenic lines (Zabala and Vodkin, 2005). Both cDNA and oligo microarrays are distributed to the community on a cost recovery basis. Contact Lila Vodkin, Department of Crop Sciences, University of Illinois for availability of slides of either the GmcDNA or GmOLIGO microarrays sets for Glycine max. Development of cDNA microarray resources for soybean The “Public EST Project for Soybean” was a multi-university and team-oriented research project funded by soybean grower check-off funds. This project stimulated development of a large public database of soybean Expressed Sequence Tags (ESTs). The number of ESTs in this database rose from less than 100 in 1998 to over 300,000 in 2005. As part of this project, a large number of cDNA libraries have been made from the mRNAs extracted from numerous tissue and organ systems of the soybean plant (Shoemaker, et al., 2002, 2004; Vodkin et al., 2004). Over