Antibody Microarray Expression Profiling Of Maize Roots Treated With Cadmium And Nickel

Here, we report the effectiveness of antibody microarray expression profiling (AbMEP) procedure to determine similarities and differences between two maize cultivars (Premia and Blitz) exposed to various concentration of cadmium (Cd), nickel (Ni), as well as simultaneous exposure to both metals (Cd + Ni) for 0, 12 and 24 h. After protein extraction from control (untreated) and heavy metals (HM)-treated root pairs and their fluorescent labelling, the protein extracts were used for the AbMEP procedure and western blot analysis. The results from the microarray were analysed using an internally normalised ratio. Using this highly parallel AbMEP-approach, the timing, dynamics and regulation of the expression of 101 specific genes in untreated and HM-treated roots of maize cultivars were determined. The microarray results revealed 23, 15 and 10 up-regulated/down-regulated proteins in Cd, Ni and Cd + Ni treated cv. Premia roots, respectively. In contrast, the microarray results revealed that 15, 11 and 7 proteins were up-regulated/down-regulated in Cd, Ni and Cd + Ni treated cv. Blitz roots, respectively. The data obtained from the AbMEP array experiment were validated by western blot analyses with more than 89% (the Pearson’s correlation coeficient Rr = 0.78) correlation between the two methods.