Project description:The total RNA were extracted from pooled tissues of leaves and flowers from several plants of chickpea (Cicer arietinum) using TRIzol reagent (Invitrogen) according to the manufacturer's instructions. Then small RNAs ranging in 18–30 nucleotides were size fractionated electrophoretically, isolated from the gel, ligated with the 5′ and 3′ RNA adapters. The ligated product was reverse transcribed and subsequently amplified using 10–12 PCR cycles. The purified PCR product was sequenced using Illumina Genome Analyzer II. The qualified reads were used to predict microRNAs and phased small interfering RNAs from chickpea. Identification of microRNAs and phased small inferfering RNAs in chickpea (Cicer arietinum) by analyzing small RNA sequencing profiles of leaves and flowers using Illumina GAII.
Project description:The total RNA were extracted from pooled tissues of leaves and flowers from several plants of chickpea (Cicer arietinum) using TRIzol reagent (Invitrogen) according to the manufacturer's instructions. Then small RNAs ranging in 18–30 nucleotides were size fractionated electrophoretically, isolated from the gel, ligated with the 5′ and 3′ RNA adapters. The ligated product was reverse transcribed and subsequently amplified using 10–12 PCR cycles. The purified PCR product was sequenced using Illumina Genome Analyzer II. The qualified reads were used to predict microRNAs and phased small interfering RNAs from chickpea.
Project description:Chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) seed proteins show a lot of functional properties leading this leg-ume an interesting component for the development of protein-enriched foods. However, both in-depth proteomic investigation and structural characterization of chickpea proteins seed are still lacking. In this paper we report a detailed characterization of chickpea seed protein fraction by means SDS-PAGE, in-gel protein digestion, high-resolution mass spectrometry, and database searching. By this approach twenty SDS gel bands were cut and analysed. While the majority of bands and the identified peptides were related to vicilin and legumin storage proteins, also metabolic functional proteins were detected. Legumins, as expected, were revealed at 45÷65 kDa, as whole subunits with the α- and β-chains linked together by a disulphide bond, but also at lower mass ranges (α- and β-chains migrating alone). Similarly, but not expected, also the vi-cilins were spread along the mass region between 65 and 23 kDa, with some of them identified in several bands. In-depth MS structural characterization allowed to determine that, although chickpea vicilins were always described as proteins lacking of cysteine residues, they contain this amino acid residue. Moreover, similarly to legumins, these storage proteins are firstly syn-thesized as pre-propolypeptides (Mr 50÷80 kDa), that may undergo to proteolytic steps that cut not only the signal peptides but also produce different subunits having lower molecular masses. Overall, about 360 different proteins specific of the Cicer arietinum L. species were identified and characterized, a result that up to date represents the most detailed description of seed’s proteome of this legume.
Project description:Chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) seeds are valued for their nutritional scores and limited information on the molecular mechanisms of chickpea fertilization and seed development is available. In the current work, comparative transcriptome analysis was performed on two different stages of chickpea ovules (pre- and post-fertilization) to identify key regulatory transcripts. Two-staged transcriptome sequencing was generated and over 208 million reads were mapped to quantify transcript abundance during fertilization events. Mapping to the reference genome showed that the majority (92.88%) of high-quality illumina reads were aligned to the chickpea genome. Reference-guided genome and transcriptome assembly yielded a total of 28,783 genes. Of these, 3399 genes were differentially expressed after the fertilization event. These involve up-regulated genes including LOC101500970, LOC101506539 and down-regulated genes LOC101493897, LOC101491695 and so on. Transcription factor families including UDP-glucuronyltransferase, NAC transcription factor, heat shock transcription factor, and auxin-responsive transcription factor were also found to be activated after fertilization. Activation of these genes and transcription factors results in the accumulation of carbohydrates and proteins by enhancing their trafficking and biosynthesis. Total 17 differentially expressed genes, were randomly selected for qRT-PCR for validation of transcriptome analysis and showed statistically significant correlations with the transcriptome data. Our findings provide insights into the regulatory mechanisms underlying changes in fertilized chickpea ovules. This work may come closer to a comprehensive understanding of the mechanisms that initiate developmental events in chickpea seeds.
Project description:Chickpea (Cicer arietinum) is the third largest legume grown worldwide and are prone to drought and various pathogen infections. These stresses often occur concurrently in the field conditions. Previous studies in other plant species indicated that plant senses concurrently occurring stresses as new state of stress however, the molecular events in response to that is largely unknown. In the present study, we studied the transcriptome changes in chickpea plants exposed to combination of drought stress and a potential wilt pathogen, Ralstonia solanacearum by microarray analysis. Chickpea plants were exposed to short duration individual drought (SD-drought, soil field capacity, FC-35%), long duration individual drought (LD-drought, FC-30%), short duration individual pathogen stress (SD-pathogen = 2 days pathogen infection), long duration individual pathogen stress (LD-pathogen = 4 days of infection) and short duration and long duration combined stress, SD-combined = 2 days of pathogen infection with progressive drought (FC-40% to FC- 35%), LD combined = 4 days of pathogen infection with progressive drought (FC-35% to 30%).Transcriptome analysis for the leaf samples from above treatment were done by microarray analysis using Agilent ChickpeaGXP_8X60K chip. Result indicated presence of specific molecular events and also some common but tailored events in response to combined stress. Global transcriptional analysis in chickpea leaves exposed to individual and combined drought stress and Ralstonia solanacearum infection.
Project description:Understanding the molecular differences in plant genotypes contrasting for heat sensitivity can provide useful insights into the mechanisms that confer heat tolerance in plants. This study is focused on comparative physiological and proteomic analyses of heat sensitive (ICC16374) and tolerant (JG14) genotypes of chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) when subjected to heat stress at anthesis.Comparative gel-free proteome profiles indicated differences in the expression levels and regulation of common proteins that are associated with heat tolerance in contrasting genotypes under heat stress. The differentially regulated proteins were grouped into three categories based on their involvement in the molecular functions, cellular location and biological processes. Besides the identification of heat shock proteins, other proteins such as acetyl-CoA carboxylase, pyrroline-5-carboxylate synthase (P5CS), ribulose-1,5-bisphosphate carboxylase/oxygenase (RuBisCo), phenylalanine ammonia-lyase (PAL) 2, ATP synthase, glycosyltransferase, sucrose synthase and late embryogenesis abundant (LEA) proteins were strongly associated with heat tolerance in chickpea. Several crucial proteins such as cystathionine gamma-synthase, glucose-1-phosphate adenyltransferas, malate dehydrogenase, threonine synthase, and non-cyanogenic ß-glucosidase were induced by heat only in the heat tolerant genotype. Based on pathway analysis, we propose that proteins which are essentially related to the electron transport chain in photosynthesis, aminoacid biosynthesis, ribosome synthesis and secondary metabolite synthesis may play key roles in inducing tolerance to heat stress.
Project description:Using microarray technology and a set of chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) unigenes, grasspea (Lathyrus sativus L.) ESTs and lentil (Lens culinaris Med.) resistance gene analogs, the ascochyta blight (Ascochyta rabiei (Pass.) L.) resistance response was studied in four chickpea genotypes, including resistant, moderately resistant, susceptible and wild relative (Cicer echinospermum L.) genotypes. The experimental system minimized environmental effects and was conducted in reference design, where samples from mock-inoculated controls acted as references against post-inoculation samples. Robust data quality was achieved through the use of three biological replicates (including a dye-swap), the inclusion of negative controls, and strict selection criteria for differentially expressed genes including a fold change cutoff determined by self-self hybridizations, Students t test and multiple testing correction (P<0.05). Microarray observations were also validated by quantitative RT-PCR. The time-course expression patterns of 756 microarray features resulted in differential expression of 97 genes in at least one genotype at one time-point. K-means clustering grouped the genes into clusters of similar observations for each genotype, and comparisons between A. rabiei-resistant and susceptible genotypes revealed potential gene 'signatures' predictive of effective A. rabiei resistance. These genes included several pathogenesis-related proteins, SNAKIN2 antimicrobial peptide, proline-rich protein, disease resistance response protein DRRG49-C, environmental stress-inducible protein, leucine-zipper protein, polymorphic antigen membrane protein, as well as several unknown proteins. The potential involvement of these genes and their pathways of induction are discussed. This study represents the first large-scale gene expression profiling in chickpea, and future work will focus on functional validation of the genes of interest. Keywords: time course disease state analysis
Project description:Drought is one of the major constraints for crop productivity across the globe. Chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) is mainly cultivated in the arid and semi-arid tropical regions under rain-fed conditions and drought stress is one of the major constraints, which causes up to 50% yield losses annually. In this study, transcriptomics, proteomics and metabolomics datasets from root tissues of contrasting drought responsive chickpea genotypes, ICC 4958 (drought-tolerant), JG 11 (drought-tolerant); an introgression line, JG 11+ (drought-tolerant) and ICC 1882, (drought-sensitive) under control and stress conditions were generated. The integrated analysis of these multi-omics data revealed complex molecular mechanism underlying drought stress response in chickpea. Transcriptomics integrated with proteomics data identified enhancement of hub proteins encoding isoflavone 4’-O-methyltransferase (Ca_06356), UDP-D-glucose/UDP-D-Galactose 4-epimerase (Ca_15037) and delta-1-pyrroline-5-carboxylate synthesis (Ca_24241). These proteins highlighted the involvement of critical pathways such as antibiotic biosynthesis, galactose metabolism and isoflavonoid biosynthesis in activating drought stress response mechanism. Subsequently, integration of metabolomics data identified six key metabolites (fructose, galactose, glucose, myo-inositol, galactinol and raffinose) that showed enhanced correlation with galactose metabolism. Further, integration of root -omics data together with genomic dataset of the “QTL-hotspot” region harbouring several drought tolerance related traits revealed involvement of candidate genes encoding aldo keto reductase family oxidoreductase (Ca_04551) and leucine rich repeat extensin 2 (Ca_04564). These results from integrated multi-omics approach provided a comprehensive understanding and new insights into the drought stress response mechanism of chickpea.