TRANSCRIPTOME BASED IDENTIFICATION OF KEY GENES RESPONSIBLE FOR HEAT STRESS TRANSCRIPTION FACTORS IN AEGILOPS SPELTOIDES AND TRITICUM AESTIVUM
Jaimeet kaur1, Parveen Chhuneja2, Gunjan Mukherjee1
1University Institute of Biotechnology, Chandigarh University, Mohali, Punjab – 140413, India
2School of Agricultural Biotechnology, Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana, Punjab – 141004, India
Abstract: Rising global temperatures are harming wheat, one of the world’s most significant grain crops. Aegilops speltoides, a wheat diploid B genome progenitor, has been identified as a prospective donor for heat tolerance. Thus, the aim of this work was to assess the transcriptome profiles of hexaploid wheat cultivars, Triticum aestivum cv. c273, and heat-tolerant Aegilops speltoides acc. Pau 3809. The comparative transcriptome analysis was used to identify and validate the key genes that contribute to heat stress resistance, known as heat stress transcription factors (HSFs). In As-Pau3809 and cv. c273, transcriptome analysis revealed a total of 94,805 and 65,085 genes, respectively. The two wheat transcriptomes have a high degree of gene ontology profile homogeneity under molecular, biological, and cellular activities, implying gene function conservation. There are 43 HSFs in the As-Pau3809 transcriptome data, while 41 in the c273 data were identified. The ExpVIP platform investigated the HSF, broadening the abiotic stress study, and their role in the heat stress response was demonstrated. Along with that, a web-based database, the Heat Stress Genes in Wheat Database (HSGDB, http://www.hsgdb-wheat.com/), was developed as the first heat stress comparative study database and contains the transcriptome assembly and functional annotation. HSGDB is an open-access resource.
Keywords: Wheat, Heat Stress, Heat Stress Genes , Gene Ontology, Database.