Reference genes for normalizing transcription in diploid and tetraploid Arabidopsis

Published transcription data from a set of 19 diploid Arabidopsis thaliana and 5 tetraploid (3 allo- and 2 auto- tetraploid) Arabidopsis accessions were re-analysed to identify reliable reference genes for normalization purposes. Five conventional and 16 novel reference genes previously derived from microarray data covering a wide range of abundance in absolute expression levels in diploid A. thaliana Col-0 were employed. Transcript abundance was well conserved for all 21 potential reference genes in the diploid A. thaliana accessions, with geNorm and NormFinder analysis indicating that AT5G46630, AT1G13320, AT4G26410, AT5G60390 and AT5G08290 were the most stable. However, conservation was less good among the tetraploid accessions, with the transcription of seven of the 21 genes being undetectable in all allotetraploids. The most stable gene was AT5G46630, while AT1G13440 was the unstable one. Hence, the choice of reference gene(s) for A. thaliana is quite wide, but with respect to the analysis of transcriptomic data derived from the tetraploids, it is probably necessary to select more than one reference gene.