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Transcriptomic analysis of Sorghum bicolor responding to combined heat and drought stress

Johnson, S.M.; Lim, F.L.; Finkler, A.; Fromm, H.; Slabas, A.R.; Knight, M.R.

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Authors

S.M. Johnson

F.L. Lim

A. Finkler

H. Fromm

A.R. Slabas



Abstract

Background: Abiotic stresses which include drought and heat are amongst the main limiting factors for plant growth and crop productivity. In the field, these stress types are rarely presented individually and plants are often subjected to a combination of stress types. Sorghum bicolor is a cereal crop which is grown in arid and semi-arid regions and is particularly well adapted to the hot and dry conditions in which it originates and is now grown as a crop. In order to better understand the mechanisms underlying combined stress tolerance in this important crop, we have used microarrays to investigate the transcriptional response of Sorghum subjected to heat and drought stresses imposed both individually and in combination. Results: Microarrays consisting of 28585 gene probes identified gene expression changes equating to ~4% and 18% of genes on the chip following drought and heat stresses respectively. In response to combined stress ~20% of probes were differentially expressed. Whilst many of these transcript changes were in common with those changed in response to heat or drought alone, the levels of 2043 specific transcripts (representing 7% of all gene probes) were found to only be changed following the combined stress treatment. Ontological analysis of these ‘unique’ transcripts identified a potential role for specific transcription factors including MYB78 and ATAF1, chaperones including unique heat shock proteins (HSPs) and metabolic pathways including polyamine biosynthesis in the Sorghum combined stress response. Conclusions: These results show evidence for both cross-talk and specificity in the Sorghum response to combined heat and drought stress. It is clear that some aspects of the combined stress response are unique compared to those of individual stresses. A functional characterization of the genes and pathways identified here could lead to new targets for the enhancement of plant stress tolerance, which will be particularly important in the face of climate change and the increasing prevalence of these abiotic stress types.

Citation

Johnson, S., Lim, F., Finkler, A., Fromm, H., Slabas, A., & Knight, M. (2014). Transcriptomic analysis of Sorghum bicolor responding to combined heat and drought stress. BMC Genomics, 15, https://doi.org/10.1186/1471-2164-15-456

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date May 27, 2014
Online Publication Date Jun 10, 2014
Publication Date Jun 10, 2014
Deposit Date Nov 14, 2014
Publicly Available Date Mar 28, 2024
Journal BMC Genomics
Publisher BioMed Central
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 15
DOI https://doi.org/10.1186/1471-2164-15-456
Keywords Combined stress, Drought, Heat, Microarray, Sorghum, Transcriptomics.

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Publisher Licence URL
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Copyright Statement
© 2014 Johnson et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.





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