“This paper was the first to use Affymetrix Genechips to evaluate the expression of thousands genes in plants exposed to abiotic stress and to compare the transcriptional response of the plant to different stresses in the same study, namely cold, NaCl and a non-ionic osmotic stress from mannitol.”

Abiotic stress-regulated gene expression has been a very active and productive area of research. Several groups have shown that by improving the expression of stress-regulated genes that plants can be made more stress-tolerant. This paper was the first to use Affymetrix GeneChips^® to evaluate the expression of thousands of genes in plants exposed to abiotic stress and to compare the transcriptional response of the plant to different stresses in the same study—namely cold, NaCl, and a non-ionic osmotic stress from mannitol. In addition, this paper also was the first time that the abiotic stress-regulated transcriptional response for a large number of genes was compared in different tissues, specifically roots and leaves. This paper presented a new way to look at stress-regulated gene expression in terms of the specificity of the response to a given stimulus as well as the differences in responses as a function of the tissue examined. Finally, changes in gene expression levels were analyzed as a function of time. The expression data sets in this paper allow the reader to look at changes in gene expression for more than eight thousand genes as a function of five different variables: three different stresses, different tissues, and different times.