Chromate gene expression patterns using cDNA-FAFLP in Cr(VI) hyper-resistant bacteria

The analysis of gene expression (transcriptomics) is a useful tool to identify genes involved in a specific process and provides important information on their functions. cDNA-Fluorescent Amplified Fragment Length Polymorphism technique (cDNA-FAFLP) is a highly reproducible and throughput technique, that allows the examination of transcriptome also in organisms whose genome sequence information is unknown (Decorosi et al., 2005). Moreover, this approach possesses sensitivity and specificity that have been compared to those of the cDNA-microarray. In order to deepen our knowledge on bacterial genetic response to Cr(VI), the transcriptome of four Gram-negative bacteria belonging to the Pseudomonas genus, isolated from Cr(VI) polluted soil and able to resist up to 40 mM K2CrO4 (Viti et al., 2006), was performed by cDNA-FAFLP. Preliminary data revealed that chromate in bacterial cells induced a response that involved genes related to metabolism, nucleic acid synthesis/ repair, and transport of molecules across the membrane, addressing in this way to the assumption that bacterial response to chromate is more complex than stated in literature.