Table 1. Description of cucumber candidate reference genes based on the comparison with their Arabidopsis orthologs.
| Gene symbol and lenght | NCBI contig accession no | Gene position within contig | NCBI EST accession no | Arabidopsis ortholog locus | Arabidopsis ortholog description | Function |
| ACT 1134 bp | ACHR01010658 | 7140–8587 | AB010922 | At5g09810 | Actin 7 | Structural constituent of cytoskeleton, protein binding |
| TUA 1467 bp | ACHR01012753 | 92843–95078 | AJ715498 | At4g14960 | Tubulin alpha-6 | Structural constituent of cytoskeleton, protein folding |
| EFα 1344 bp | ACHR01002194 | 9646–11514 | EF446145 | At5g60390 | Elongation factor 1-alpha | Translational elongation |
| CYP 519 bp | ACHR01007623 | 9364–9882 | AY942800 | At2g16600 | Peptidyl-prolyl cis-trans isomerase CYP19-1 | Protein folding, signal transduction |
| CACS 1278 bp | ACHR01010524 | 38791– 44675 | GW881874 | At5g46630 | AP-2 complex subunit mu-1 (Clathrin adaptor complexes medium subunit family protein) | Intracellular protein transport, vesicle-mediated transport |
| HEL 1014 bp | ACHR01008789 | 1228–5426 | GW881869 | At1g58050 | RNA helicase family protein | Helicase activity |
| TIP41 873 bp | ACHR01001003 | 28762–31836 | GW881871 | At4g34270 | TIP41-like family protein | PP2A phosphatase activator |
| UBI-1 306 bp | ACHR01007578 | 26294–27611 | AF104391 | At5g57860 | Ubiquitin family protein | Protein binding, protein modification |
| F-box 1378 bp | ACHR01005017 | 38102–39873 | GW881870 | At5g15710 | F-box/kelch-repeat protein | Unknown |
| YSL8 429 bp | ACHR01006572 | 23112–24359 | GW881872 | At5g08290 | Yellow-Leaf-Specific gene 8, YLS8 | Vesicle-mediated transport, mitosis, vacuole and Golgi organization |
| GW881873 984 bp | ACHR01016153 | 59983–63343 | GW881873 | At4g33380 | Expressed protein | Unknown |
| PDF2 2103 bp | ACHR01000299 | 57230–62778 | GW881868 | At1g13320 | Protein Phosphatase 2A Subunit A3 | N-terminal protein myristoylation, regulation of phosphorylation |
Seven of the twelve candidate cucumber reference genes (CACS, TIP41, PDF2, GW881873, YSL8, HEL) have been recently retrieved from the whole cucumber genome sequence [36] using the novel reference genes identified in Arabidopsis as the query sequences [3]. The commonly used remaining five genes (ACT, TUA, UBI-1, EFα, CYP) were previously available in the Genbank database as partial cDNAs. The full cDNAs and exon/intron organization of all 12 candidate genes were established using BlastN, and FGENESH or FGENESH+.