Key Sericultural Laboratory of Agricultural Ministry, Key Laboratory for Sericultural Sciences and Genomics of the Ministry of Education, College of Biotechnology, Southwest University, Beibei, Chongqing 400715, China. xiaqy@swu.edu.cn
We designed and constructed a genome-wide microarray with 22,987 70-mer oligonucleotides covering the presently known and predicted genes in the silkworm genome, and surveyed the gene expression in multiple silkworm tissues on day 3 of the fifth instar. Clusters of tissue-prevalent and tissue-specific genes and genes that are differentially expressed in different tissues were identified, and they reflect well major tissue-specific functions on the molecular level. The data presented in this study provide a new resource for annotating the silkworm genome.