Abstract
BACKGROUND: To provide a broad analysis of gene expression changes in developing embryos from a solanaceous species, we produced amplicon-derived microarrays with 7741 ESTs isolated from Solanum chacoense ovules bearing embryos from all developmental stages. Our aims were to: 1) identify genes expressed in a tissue-specific and temporal-specific manner; 2) define clusters of genes showing similar patterns of spatial and temporal expression; and 3) identify stage-specific or transition-specific candidate genes for further functional genomic analyses. RESULTS: We analyzed gene expression during S. chacoense embryogenesis in a series of experiments with probes derived from ovules isolated before and after fertilization (from 0 to 22 days after pollination), and from leaves, anthers, and styles. From the 6374 unigenes present in our array, 1024 genes were differentially expressed (>or= +/- 2 fold change, p value