Transcriptomic responses to drought and salt stress in desert tree Prosopis juliflora

Abstract

Abiotic stresses affect crop productivity worldwide. Understanding molecular mechanisms of plant abiotic stress tolerance is important for developing stress tolerant crop plants for sustaining crop productivity in the future. Prosopis juliflora (Sw) DC (mesquite) is a leguminous tree species tolerant to drought and heavy metal stress. We subjected P. juliflora seedlings to salt and drought stress and carried out whole transcriptome profiling of leaf and root tissues. Assessing the global transcriptome changes under drought and salt stress resulted in the identification of several genes contributing to stress responses in this species. Overall, more transcriptomic changes were observed in root tissue compared to leaf tissue. The study identified stress responsive genes commonly and differently regulated under stress/tissue conditions. A high percentage of genes commonly downregulated by drought and salt stress specifically in root tissue were coding for various ribosomal proteins. The study also indicated a possible role for ‘centrins’ in stress responses. Our data will facilitate further molecular studies on stress tolerance of P. juliflora. The DEGs from our results are potential candidates for understanding and engineering abiotic stress tolerance in plants.