On February 10th, 2009, Plos One published a research paper entitled “Microarray Analyses of Gene Expression during the Tetrahymena thermophila Life Cycle”. Supported by Projects of International Cooperation from the Ministry of Science and Technology of China and Natural Sciences Foundation of China, Dr. Wei MIAO and Jie XIONG (graduate student) from the Research Group of Taxonomy and Ecology of Protozoa at IHB collaborated with Prof. Gorovsky from University of Rochester to complete this study. 

The paper introduced the first ciliate, T. thermophila, genome-wide microarray platform which was accomplished by Dr. Miao and his collaborators during the past two years. Based on this high throughput gene expression analyses system, genome-wide expression data of this organism under 20 stages of three major physiological/developmental (growth, starvation, and conjugation) were obtained; and a series of analyzing methods including co-expressed genes search were constructed and developed. This paper was valued as “a major milestone in molecular research on ciliates” by peer reviewers. 

Tetrahymena is a free-living, worldwide distributed freshwater ciliate. As a model eukaryotic organism, it contributes to fundamental research: elucidation of the fundamental structure of telomeres, the discovery of catalytic RNA and the first demonstration that a transcription factor (GCN5p) acts by catalyzing a histone post-translational modification etc. Now the establishment of microarray analysis platform will promote this organism to understand metabolize pathway and regulation network in eukaryotes at the genome level.  

Recently, Tetrahymena Gene Expression Database (TGED) and website maintained by Dr. Miao’s group at IHB has started up. It will be constructed as the information center of Tetrahymena functional genomics by collecting, providing, and sharing Tetrahymena microarray data and analyses programs.