Touch-inducible genes for calmodulin and a calmodulin-related protein are located in tandem on a chromosome of Arabidopsis thaliana.

Genes for calmodulin and calmodulin-related proteins in Arabidopsis are up-regulated by a variety of physical stimuli, which include rain, wind and touch [Braam and Davis (1990) Cell 60: 357]. We have isolated five genes for calmodulin (AtCAL1, 2, 3, 5, 6) and one gene for a calmodulin-related protein (AtCAL4) from an Arabidopsis genomic library. Touch stimulus of Arabidopsis plants induces the accumulation of mRNA transcribed from AtCAL4 and AtCAL5, but not from the other isolated genes. The two touch-inducible genes are arrayed in tandem with a short intergenic region of 700 bp but they show different organ-specific patterns of expression.