In addition, the identification of genes induced during microsporogenesis and pollen maturation processes could assist in the finding of expression biomarkers associated to dormancy release in peach. Conclusions This study utilized transcriptomic data from flower buds of peach at different stages of dormancy and several cultivars with different chilling requirements to obtain a list of flower bud late genes expressed shortly after dormancy release. Some of these genes Inhibitors,Modulators,Libraries clustered into two major expression patterns. Their close similar ity to Inhibitors,Modulators,Libraries genes described in the sporopollenin synthesis pathway in Arabidopsis and their transitory expression in anthers coinciding with microsporogenesis events strongly suggests their participation in the biochemical processes required for the formation of the cell wall exine of pollen grains.

In addition, three peach regula Anacetrapib tory factors with bHLH, PHD and AT hook domains have been postulated to take part in transcriptional circuits regulating late anther development in peach. Methods Plant material The Prunus persica Batsch cv 86 6, Big Top, Carolina, Crimson Baby, Flor Red, May Glo, Precocinho, Red Candem, Rose Diamond and Sunraycer were grown in an orchard located at the Instituto Valenciano de Inves tigaciones Agrarias in Moncada under standard agricultural practices. The samples required for qRT PCR of different cultivars were obtained from flower buds collected after a Inhibitors,Modulators,Libraries chilling accumulation of 400 chilling hours. Flower buds of Big Top cultivar for microscopy studies and time dependent expression analysis were collected on the following dates of winter in 2012, 17 January, 30 January, 13 February, 27 February, and 12 March.

Buds for the experiments described in Figure 4 were obtained from sample 3. Buds were rou tinely pooled from shoots obtained from three different Inhibitors,Modulators,Libraries adult trees. Analysis of microarray data Microarray data utilized in this study are stored in the ArrayExpress database with accession number E MEXP 3201. We generated a subset of microarray hybridization signals containing only genes and ESTs with higher expression in dormancy released flower buds according to previous works. The hybridization signal intensity from those ESTs proceeding from the same gene was averaged to have a single hybridization value per gene for each of the ten cultivars used in the experi ment.

Clustering of gene expression data was performed in the platform Babelomics using the UPGMA method and the Pearson correlation coefficient as distance. Similarity searches In order to identify putative orthologs of peach flower bud late genes in Arabidopsis we performed a reciprocal blast analysis. First we made a blastp similarity search on Arabidopsis database using the predicted translated pro tein of flower bud late genes as query.