Anti-RPS15 monoclonal antibody, clone MAAG1971

An efficient technique for investigating gene expression is the real time quantitative reverse transcription PCR (qRT-PCR). Despite the fact that this technique has been extensively used to explore the gene function in Helicoverpa armigera, stability of the reference genes still requires validation. This research aims to validate the stability of expression of nine potential reference genes under different experimental conditions including temperature, mechanical injury, starvation, photoperiod, and developmental stage. An exhaustive system (RefFinder), available online, was employed to evaluate and grade the studied genes. Appropriateness of the reference genes as endogenous controls was determined through four computational algorithms (Delta Ct, NormFinder, BestKeeper, and geNorm). According to the findings of this study, RPL28 and RPS15 were found to be the most stable reference genes in case of starved larvae, temperature stressed larvae; and different developmental stages. On the other hand, HSP90 and TUBB proved to be highly stable in case of photoperiod stressed larvae. Finally, TUBB and GAPDH were the most stable reference genes in case of larvae subjected to mechanical injury. These results can facilitate development of a standardized qRT-PCR technique and can also prove to be helpful for standard RT-PCR method which need reference gene for normalization. (C) 2015 Korean Society of Applied Entomology, Taiwan Entomological Society and Malaysian Plant Protection Society. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Aster spathulifolius, a member of the Asteraceae family, is distributed along the coast of Japan and Korea. This plant is used for medicinal and ornamental purposes. The complete chloroplast (cp) genome of A. sphathulifolius consists of 149,473 bp that include a pair of inverted repeats of 24,751 bp separated by a large single copy region of 81,998 bp and a small single copy region of 17,973 bp. The chloroplast genome contains 78 coding genes, four rRNA genes and 29 tRNA genes. When compared to other cpDNA sequences of Asteraceae, A. spathulifolius showed the closest relationship with Jacobaea vulgaris, and its atpB gene was found to be a pseudogene, unlikeJ. vulgaris. Furthermore, evaluation of the gene compositions off. vulgaris, Helianthus annuus, Guizotia abyssinica and A. spathuhfolius revealed that 13.6-kb showed inversion from ndhF to rps15, unlike Lactuca of Asteraceae. Comparison of the synonymous (Ks) and nonsynonymous (Ka) substitution rates with J. vulgaris revealed that synonymous genes related to a small subunit of the ribosome showed the highest value (0.1558), while nonsynonymous rates of genes related to ATP synthase genes were highest (0.0118). These findings revealed that substitution has occurred at similar rates in most genes, and the substitution rates suggested that most genes is a purified selection. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.