Abstract
Plant productivity is greatly affected by environmental stresses such as drought, salt loading, and freezing. We attempted to study the cold-induced genes and their possible function using Phalaenopsis aphrodite subsp. formosana which is relatively tolerant to cold stress. One hundred thirty-two ESTs were selected from a previously constructed library based on PCR-select subtraction with low temperature and analyzed. Sequence analyses for the predicted functions of deduced proteins suggested that they can be grouped into categories of disease/defense, energy, metabolism, protein destination, storage, protein modification, protein synthesis, signal transduction, structural protein and transcriptional control. DNA dot blots were used to reexamine the up-regulated and down-regulated ESTs selected from cold stress. Ten genes with significantly differential expression were selected for Northern bolt analysis. Three cold responsive genes were characterized, including the WRKY、MYB transcription factors and defender against cell death 1 (DAD1). The study of these genes might be important for understanding the interactions underlying cold stress signaling pathway