Comparative Analysis of the Transcriptional Response of Tolerant and Sensitive Wheat Genotypes to Drought Stress in Field Conditions

Shuzuo Lv,Jianxin Bian,Shaofeng Peng,Xiaojun Nie,Jieqiong Wang,Yuanfei Zhang,Kewei Feng

doi:10.3390/agronomy8110247

Abstract

Drought stress is one of the most adverse environmental limiting factors for wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) productivity worldwide. For better understanding of the molecular mechanism of wheat in response to drought, a comparative transcriptome approach was applied to investigate the gene expression change of two wheat cultivars, Jimai No. 47 (drought-tolerant) and Yanzhan No. 4110 (drought-sensitive) in the field under irrigated and drought-stressed conditions. A total of 3754 and 2325 differential expressed genes (DEGs) were found in Jimai No. 47 and Yanzhan No. 4110, respectively, of which 377 genes were overlapped, which could be considered to be the potential drought-responsive genes. GO (Gene Ontology) analysis showed that these DEGs of tolerant genotype were significantly enriched in signaling transduction and MAP (mitogen-activated protein) kinase activity, while that of sensitive genotype was involved in photosynthesis, membrane protein complex, and guard cell differentiation. Furthermore, 32 and 2 RNA editing sites were identified in drought-tolerant and sensitive genotypes under drought compared to irrigation, demonstrating that RNA editing also plays an important role in response to drought in wheat. This study investigated the gene expression pattern and RNA editing sites of two wheat cultivars with contrasting tolerance in field condition, which will contribute to a better understanding of the molecular mechanism of drought tolerance in wheat and beyond.

Highlights

Drought is one of the most hazardous environmental stresses limiting plant growth and development, which gradually becomes a major threat to the world’s agricultural production nowadays and leads to huge yield losses of major crops annually [1,2,3]
Several genes and proteins have been reported to be induced in response to drought tolerance, such as dehydration-responsive element binding protein (DREB), C-repeat-binding factor (CBF) and myeloblastosis oncogene (MYB) [15,16,17]
These results indicated that the drought-tolerant adjustment, so theacell process and membrane weretonot negatively byadaptive drought genotype activated series of signaling pathways activity in response drought stress affected and made stress, whilesothe not rapidly activate signaling transduction but adjustment, thedrought-sensitive cell process and genotype membranedid activity were not negatively affected by drought activated photosynthesis and cellular process to cope with drought stress

Summary

Introduction

Drought is one of the most hazardous environmental stresses limiting plant growth and development, which gradually becomes a major threat to the world’s agricultural production nowadays and leads to huge yield losses of major crops annually [1,2,3]. An osmotic adjustment is first activated and the osmolytes such as proline, glutamate, and mannitol as well as sorbitol and trehalose are accumulated, which could prevent the plant cell from dehydration by increasing the osmotic stress to keep cell membrane integration and enzyme function under drought stress [13,14]. These substances have been used as the physiological indictors to assess the drought tolerance in plants. An increasing number of studies are further needed to uncover the complex regulatory mechanism of drought tolerance

Methods

Results

Conclusion