Project description:Nitrogen (N), a critical macronutrient for plant growth and development, is a major limiting factor in most agricultural systems. Microarray analyses have been conducted to investigate genome-wide gene expression in response to changes in N concentrations. Although RNA-Seq analysis can provide a more precise determination of transcript levels, it has not previously been employed to investigate the expression of N-starvation-induced genes. We constructed cDNA libraries from leaf sheaths and roots of rice plants grown under N-deficient or -sufficient conditions for 12 h. Sequencing the libraries resulted in identification of 33,782 annotated genes. A comparison of abundances revealed 1,650 transcripts that were differentially expressed (fold-changeââ¥â2) due to an N-deficiency. Among them, 1,158 were differentially expressed in the leaf sheaths (548 up-regulated and 610 down-regulated) and 492 in the roots (276 up, 216 down).
Project description:A biological phenomenon in which hybrids exhibit superior phenotypes from its parental inbred lines known as heterosis, has been widely exploited in plant breeding and extensively used in crop improvement. Hybrid rice has immense potential to increase yield over other rice varieties and hence is crucial in meeting increasing demand of rice globally. Moreover, the molecular basis of heterosis is still not fully understood and hence it becomes imperative to unravel its genetic and molecular basis. In this context, RNA sequencing technology (RNA-Seq) was employed to sequence transcriptomes of two rice hybrids, Ajay and Rajalaxmi, their parental lines, CRMS31A (sterile line, based on WA-CMS) and CRMS32A (sterile line based on Kalinga-CMS) respectively along with the common restorer line of both hybrids, IR-42266-29-3R at two critical rice developmental stages viz., panicle initiation (PI) and grain filling (GF). Identification of differentially expressed genes (DEGs) at PI and GF stages will further pave the way for understanding heterosis. In addition, such kind of study would help in better understanding of heterosis mechanism and genes up-regulated and down-regulated during the critical stages of rice development for higher yield.
Project description:Purpose: The goal of this study was to identify the differentially expressed genes (DEGs) in the fluoride susceptible indica rice cultivar IR-64 in response to prolonged fluoride stress. The genes exhibiting high significance of relative expression were further analyzed by RT-PCR. Results: De novo transcriptome assembly by Trinity v2.8.3 led to the identification of 158411 transcripts. The Percent GC was 49.67, contig N50 was 1327, Median contig length was 422, average contig was 768.66 and total assembled bases were 121764099. After refinement and open reading frame detection with TransDecoder 70578 transcripts were retained. Among them, 68009 transcripts had at least one hit from Uniref100, Uniprot or Pfam. Differential expression analysis identified 1303 genes to be overexpressed and 93 genes to be down regulated in response to fluoride stress. After filtering, the transcripts with absolute log2 fold change 2 or more and p-value < 0.05 were considered as significantly differentially expressed. A total of 1396 transcripts with differential expression (majority overexpressed and some down regulated) were considered for further analysis. Next, PCR analysis with gene-specific primers was performed with some of the significant DEGs associated with transport, cytoskeletal organization and signaling to identify the genes/transcripts that are involved in stress