Prediction of drought regulating gene (s) in barley (Hordeum vulgare L.) using express sequence tags (ESTs) through in silico approaches

Abstract

Climate change is a major current issue in the world, affecting the availability and stability of food. It leads to the most damaging abiotic stress for the ecosystem and the one that results in the greatest output loss is drought. Barley was once thought to be an abiotic stress-tolerant plant but the production of barley dropped significantly due to drought-stress. In this study, a computational method was used to predict the genes in barley that are associated with drought stress. The expressed sequence tags (ESTs) were investigated to identify the gene expression profiling in barley during drought stress. Various software, tools, and servers were used to predict the genes using ESTs, which were responsive to drought stress. The TFcat and blast2GO tools were used to predict transcription factors and enzymes respectively. Phytozome and plantCARE databases were used to validate newly predicted novel candidate genes using promoter studies. By using the Ensemble plant genome database, new genes related to drought stress were discovered. There were only 37 locations in the barley genome that had candidate genes. According to the promoter analysis, twenty nine genes had more than ten cis acting controlling elements that was related to drought stress in various plants. The promoter study showed that 29 out of 37 genes contained more than 10 cis-acting regulatory elements involved in drought stress in different plants. These findings will be helpful to identify the novel drought stress tolerant gene in barley that may play an important role in developing new varieties in near future.