Functional annotation of differentially expressed genes under salt stress in Dichanthium annulatum

• Published in: Indian journal of plant physiology 2019-03, Vol.24 (1), p.104-111
• Main Authors: Mann, Anita, Kumar, Naresh, Lata, Charu, Kumar, Ashwani, Kumar, Arvind, Meena, B. L.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Abiotic stress; Annotations; Biological activity; Biomedical and Life Sciences; Cell Biology; Crop improvement; Dichanthium annulatum; Genes; Halophytes; Life Sciences; Original Article; Plant Biochemistry; Plant Ecology; Plant Genetics and Genomics; Plant growth; Plant Physiology; Plant Sciences; Salinity; Salinity effects; Salt; Salt tolerance; Sodium chloride; Soil salinity; Soil stresses
• ISSN: 2662-253X; 0019-5502; 2662-2548; 0974-0252
• DOI: 10.1007/s40502-019-0434-8

Soil salinity is one of the important abiotic stresses affecting plant growth and development. Halophytes can be one of the options to explore the salt tolerance potential and to identify the potential gene(s) which can be used in crop improvement programs. In view of this, the present experiment was conducted on grass halophyte, Dichanthium annulatum , which can tolerate soil salinity up to EC 30 dS/m (~ 300 mM NaCl) to identify the gene(s) for salt tolerance. The de novo assembly generated 267,196 transcripts and these assembled transcripts were further clustered into 188,353 transcripts. An average of 64.47% of the transcripts was functionally annotated against the viridiplantae databases since no genomic reference is available for Dichanthium . Gene ontology and pathways analysis using KAAS database identified that 48.13% transcripts were involved in molecular function, 37.21% in cellular component and 14.66% in biological processes. The annotation of these genes provides a pathway analysis for their putative functions under salt stress conditions.