Figure 6

Alteration in transcript abundance of a set (13) of genes encoding for putative DNA methyltransferases (a), 5-methylcytosine DNA glycosylases (b), and siRNA pathway-related proteins (c) in the mutator-phenotype (Tong211-LP) and 8 selected S1 individuals, relative to their parental rice line Tong211. Real-time RT-PCR analysis on transcript quantity of the 13 genes in expanded young leaf tissue was performed on three batches of independent RNA-derived cDNAs with gene – specific primers (see Additional file 5). The relative abundance of transcripts (means ± SD) for each of the studied genes was calculated upon normalization against a rice β-actin gene (Genbank accession X79378). The gene names are labeled. * and ** denote statistical significance at the 0.05 and 0.01 levels, respectively.