Project description:Background: Thellungiella salsuginea is an important model plant due to its natural tolerance to abiotic stresses including salt, cold, and water deficits. Microarray and metabolite profiling have shown that Thellungiella undergoes stress-responsive changes in transcript and organic solute abundance when grown under controlled environmental conditions. However, few reports assess the capacity of plants to display stress-responsive traits in natural habitats where concurrent stresses are the norm. Results: To determine whether stress-responsive changes observed in cabinet-grown plants are recapitulated in the field, we analyzed leaf transcript and metabolic profiles of Thellungiella growing in its native Yukon habitat during two years of contrasting meteorological conditions. We found 673 genes showing differential expression between field and unstressed, chamber-grown plants. There were comparatively few overlaps between genes expressed under field and cabinet treatment-specific conditions. Only 20 of 99 drought-responsive genes were expressed both in the field during a year of low precipitation and in plants subjected to drought treatments in cabinets. There was also a general pattern of lower abundance among metabolites found in field plants relative to control or stress-treated plants in growth cabinets. Nutrient availability may explain some of the observed differences. For example, proline accumulated to high levels in cold and salt-stressed cabinet-grown plants but proline content was, by comparison, negligible in plants at a saline Yukon field site. We show that proline accumulated in a stress-responsive manner in Thellungiella plants salinized in growth cabinets and in salt-stressed seedlings when nitrogen was provided at 1.0 mM. In seedlings grown on 0.1 mM nitrogen medium, the proline content was low while carbohydrates increased. The relatively higher content of sugar-like compounds in field plants and seedlings on low nitrogen media suggests that Thellungiella shows metabolic plasticity in response to environmental stress and that resource availability can influence the expression of stress tolerance traits under field conditions. Conclusion: Comparisons between Thellungiella plants responding to stress in cabinets and in their natural habitats showed differences but also overlap between transcript and metabolite profiles. The traits in common offer potential targets for improving crops that must respond appropriately to multiple, concurrent stresses.

Project description:Background: Thellungiella salsuginea is an important model plant due to its natural tolerance to abiotic stresses including salt, cold, and water deficits. Microarray and metabolite profiling have shown that Thellungiella undergoes stress-responsive changes in transcript and organic solute abundance when grown under controlled environmental conditions. However, few reports assess the capacity of plants to display stress-responsive traits in natural habitats where concurrent stresses are the norm. Results: To determine whether stress-responsive changes observed in cabinet-grown plants are recapitulated in the field, we analyzed leaf transcript and metabolic profiles of Thellungiella growing in its native Yukon habitat during two years of contrasting meteorological conditions. We found 673 genes showing differential expression between field and unstressed, chamber-grown plants. There were comparatively few overlaps between genes expressed under field and cabinet treatment-specific conditions. Only 20 of 99 drought-responsive genes were expressed both in the field during a year of low precipitation and in plants subjected to drought treatments in cabinets. There was also a general pattern of lower abundance among metabolites found in field plants relative to control or stress-treated plants in growth cabinets. Nutrient availability may explain some of the observed differences. For example, proline accumulated to high levels in cold and salt-stressed cabinet-grown plants but proline content was, by comparison, negligible in plants at a saline Yukon field site. We show that proline accumulated in a stress-responsive manner in Thellungiella plants salinized in growth cabinets and in salt-stressed seedlings when nitrogen was provided at 1.0 mM. In seedlings grown on 0.1 mM nitrogen medium, the proline content was low while carbohydrates increased. The relatively higher content of sugar-like compounds in field plants and seedlings on low nitrogen media suggests that Thellungiella shows metabolic plasticity in response to environmental stress and that resource availability can influence the expression of stress tolerance traits under field conditions. Conclusion: Comparisons between Thellungiella plants responding to stress in cabinets and in their natural habitats showed differences but also overlap between transcript and metabolite profiles. The traits in common offer potential targets for improving crops that must respond appropriately to multiple, concurrent stresses. A custom cDNA mcroarray was used for transcript profiling. Cauline leaves from individual plants collected at a Yukon, Canada field site were used in this study. Three samples were obtained in 2003 (Field 2003 A, B and C) and three harvested in 2005 (Field 2005 A, B and D). Cauline leaves from 12 week old chamber grown plants served as controls. For each microarray experiment a technical replicate (dye swap) was performed resulting in a total of 12 hybridizations.

Project description:‘Pulsechip’, a boutique cDNA microarray, generated from a set of chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) unigenes, grasspea (Lathyrus sativus L.) ESTs and lentil (Lens culinaris Med.) resistance gene analogs, was employed to generate an expression profile of chickpea genotype ICC 3996 to drought, cold and high-salinity stresses. The experiments were performed in three biological replications. The experiments were conducted in reference design where respective tissues from unstressed plants served as control. The leaf/shoot, flower/pod and/or root tissues were collected and used for hybridization to measure changes in RNA abundance of treatment vs. control. The tissues from five experimental replicate plants per biological replication were pooled together (leaf/flower/root tissues pooled separately) before RNA extraction. This RNA was used to prepare cDNA targets for expression analysis using microarray. The microarray had six technical replicate spots per EST. The transcript level for each EST/cDNA was firstly calculated as the average intensity of the six technical replicates and then the average intensity of three biological replicates. Data analysis included LOWESS normalization (LOcally WEighted polynomial regreSSion) to adjust for differences in quantity of initial RNA, labeling and detection efficiencies. A dye swap in one biological replicate adjusted dye bias, if any. The Differentially Expressed (DE) ESTs were identified as those with a 95% confidence interval for mean fold change (FC) that extended beyond the two-fold cut-off and also passed the Students t test (P<0.05) and FDR correction. These cut-offs translate into induced ESTs having a log2 ratio > 1 and repressed ESTs a ratio of < -1. Overall, 46, 54 and 266 ESTs were identified as DE under drought, cold, and high-salinity stresses, respectively. The important ones DE in response to drought stress include induction of transcripts associated with dehydrin-cognate, lipid-transfer protein precursor, and glutamate-hydrolysing asparagine synthetase, whilst repression of transcripts associated with senescence, photosynthesis/energy metabolism, auxin-repressed protein, starch metabolism, AP2/EREBP1 DNA binding domain, putative ARF1 GTPase activating protein, and histidine-containing phosphotransfer protein ATHP3. The interesting transcripts DE in response to cold-stress included induction of phosphate-induced protein, cationic peroxidase, UDP-glucose 4-epimerase, Avr9/Cf9 rapidly elicited protein, DNA-J like protein involved in intracellular protein transport, and protein kinase, whist repression of transcripts associated with a hypothetical transmembrane protein, membrane related protein CP5, lipid-transfer protein precursor, WD repeat protein and several transcripts associated with cellular metabolism, cell cycle and DNA processing, protein synthesis and photosynthesis/energy metabolism. Under high-salinity stress, several transcripts were DE only in roots at 24 hpt but DE in shoots or both, shoots and roots at 48 hpt, relating to the theory of upward movement of salt to shoots at later stages when roots fail to restrict it (Munns et al., 2002). The important transcripts DE in response to high-salinity stress included induction of aluminum-induced protein, auxin-repressed proteins, metallothionein-like protein, glutamate dehydrogenase, sucrose synthase, UDP-glucose 4-epimerase, xylose isomerase, class 10 pathogenesis related protein, disease resistance protein, SNAKIN 2 antimicrobial peptide, and DNA-J like protein involved in intra-cellular protein transport. Whilst high-salinity stress caused the repression of transcripts associated with cell rescue/death, cell cycle/DNA processing, cellular metabolism, photosynthesis/energy metabolism, and transport facilitation. Several of the above transcripts have been previously implicated to be associated with abiotic stress response in other crops. Hence, the study of more genotypes and transcriptional changes at several time points may provide a better picture of involvement of the genes being interrogated here in drought tolerance/susceptibility. Subsequently, the functionality of candidate tolerance genes detected through this approach could be validated by overexpressing the genes through transgenics or silencing them using knockout-mutants/antisense/RNAi. Keywords: abiotic stress response, drought, cold, high-salinity, chickpea

Project description:Sunflower is an important source of vegetable oil worlwide. A differential organ-specific sunflower ESTs was previously generated by a subtractive hybridization method, including a considerable number of abiotic stress associated sequences. The objective of this work is to analyze the sunflower gene expression of previously identified candidate genes under a comprehensive microarray analysis of the leaf transcriptoma under cold and salinity stresses, considering the impacts of these abiotic stresses on sunflower yield in many productive areas. The aimed of this work is to perform genome analysis of sunflower based on its functional regions and the characterization of the sunflower transcriptoma profiles for different organ-specific genes. Abiotic-related expressed genes were the target of this characterization through a gene expression analysis of the local EST bank (annotated according to Gene Ontology Annotation) using a cDNA organ-specific microarray chip approach. We analyzed 287 differentially expressed genes derived from leaf, stem, R1 and R4 flower developmental stages. Transcriptional analysis allowed the detection of three different groups of genes according to their expression patterns. Group 1 contained 112 up-regulated genes under abiotic stress conditions (cold or salinity), whereas Group 2 (126 genes) did not show changes in their expression levels. On the other hand, 49 genes were classified as Group 3 included were down-regulated genes under both stresses. Eighty genes exhibited a significative fold change under abiotic stress conditions, being six of them validated by qRT-PCR. Microrarray profiling of cold and NaCl-treated sunflower leaves revealed dynamic changes in transcript abundance, including transcription factors, defense/stress related proteins, and effectors of homeostasis, all of which highlight the complexity of both stress responses. This finding provides identification of many transcriptional processes occurring under abiotic stress in sunflower for genes isolated from organ-specific cDNA libraries Keywords: gene expression profile of organ-specific sunflower transcriptoma in response to NaCl and cold

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Transcriptional Profiling Implicates Novel Interactions between Abiotic Stress and Hormonal Responses in Thellungiella

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