Volume 2 (2010): Issue 1 (January 2010)

The aim of this article is to present the current literature concerning the expression analysis and methods of functional characteristics of genes. The progress in the analysis of gene expression within cells or whole tissues is undisputed and leads to a constant improvement of our understanding of the function of particular gene. The traditional methods of the functional characteristics of genes such as homology, inactivation and overexpression are more frequently being replaced by microarray and DNA chip analysis, which are extensively supported by bioinformatics tools. Knowledge of the functions and changes in gene expression has applications in medical diagnostics, the pharmaceutical industry and in plant and animal biotechnology.

One of the key issues of organogenesis is the understanding of mechanisms underlying the differentiation of progenitor cells into more specialized cells of individual tissues. Recent transcriptomic and proteomic approaches of molecular biology have led to the identification of several factors and mechanisms regulating morphogenesis at the genetic level which affect the function of already differentiated cells. In the last few years, several reports about osteoblastogenesis have been published. This review presents recent findings on the role of the most important transcription factors supporting bone formation.

The pollen grain, because of its unique structural organization, is an extremely useful experimental model in cytological, molecular as well as in genetic studies. Due to the ease of pollen grain isolation, their sorting as well as simple extraction of their DNA, RNA and proteins, male gametophyte cells of angiosperms are presently one of the most intensively studied plant cells. Important and rapid progress in the development of experimental tools for genome exploration caused a significant increase in the number of reports concerning different aspects of gene expression during microsporogenesis and microgametogenesis in angiosperm plants. In this review we present the current knowledge of the pollen transcriptome and proteome during different stages of male gametophyte development, especially in Arabidopsis thaliana. Most of the results presented here were obtained in experiments carried out using microarrays, which were designed on the basis of the known sequence of the Arabidopsis genome.