Molecular analysis of root medium impact on Arabidopsis thaliana development

Hydroponics and soil are the most common media used for plant growth. Hydroponics has the main advantage of providing easy access to the root system and is therefore commonly used for gene expression analyses in molecular studies of the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana. However, the impact of root substrate on plant growth remains poorly documented. Here we show that hydroponics accelerates both shoot growth and developmental phases as compared with culture on soil. In order to identify molecular changes in the roots that could account for these medium effects, a transcriptomic comparison was performed by microarray analysis. This experiment revealed that more than 20% of the genes were differentially expressed in hydroponics vs soil. Among them, the flowering time gene FLOWERING LOCUS C and two clades of microRNA targeted genes. To further assess the role of these genes in roots, artificial microRNAs were designed for root specific expression in transgenic Arabidopsis plants.