Vitis vinifera cv. Corvina Gene Expression Atlas

The grapevine Vitis vinifera is in economic terms the most important fruit crop in the world. The French-Italian Public Consortium completed a 12X Whole Genome Shotgun sequence, providing the foundation for a significant expansion in grapevine functional genomics research. The expression microarrays assess the transcriptome by simultaneously measuring the expression of about 30,000 genes. A microarray technology developed by Roche-NimbleGen 12x135K enables hybridization of up to 12 independent samples on a single slide. We analyzed global gene expression during development of the plant Vitis vinifera cv. Corvina (clone 48) in samples covering many stages and different organs. Sampling entailed the collection of 16 organs, split in different stages of development. Including all biological replicates, this project entailed the hybridization of about 162 samples. The expression atlas pointed out the expression of almost 90% of the grape transcriptome. The number of expressed genes in a tissue or organ was observed to change with respect to the developmental stage and some of the tissues showed the expression of specific genes. The correlation between tissues and organs was revealed to cluster in relation to metabolism rather than organ identity. Such a gene expression atlas should serve as a resource to observe the expression levels of transcription factor genes and signal transduction components, compared to those of metabolic genes. Moreover, it will explain if specialized expression patterns could be caused by preferential use of entire gene families in specific developmental processes.