Differential Gene Expression Pattern of Drought Responsive Transcription Factors in Chickpea: An Expressional Analysis
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Differential Gene Expression Pattern of Drought Responsive Transcription Factors in Chickpea: An Expressional Analysis Sara Borhani1 · Saeedreza Vessal2 · Abdolreza Bagheri1 · Farhad Shokouhifar2 Received: 23 May 2019 / Accepted: 29 November 2019 © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2019
Abstract Chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) is an important grain crop mainly grown in arid and semi-arid regions of the world. Drought is the major factor limiting chickpea growth and productivity. Transcription factors (TFs) genes have been reported as key regulators of drought tolerance in plants. In this study, we determined the relative gene expression of transcription factors of WRKY, DREB2A, and CarNAC3 in three weeks seedlings of tolerant (MCC537) and susceptible (MCC674) genotypes under progressive water deficit through semi-quantitative reverse transcriptase PCR (SqRT-PCR) method. Furthermore, results of SqRT-PCR were more confirmed by quantitative PCR (qPCR). Relative gene expression analysis of the selected genes using qPCR revealed different dehydration-responsive expression patterns. The expression of WRKY gene was significantly induced in both tolerant and sensitive genotypes under severe drought stress (at the last time point). Also, in tolerant genotype, DREB2A gene was approximately expressed three, five and fourfold higher than control plants at three times points, respectively. Moreover, the expression level of CarNAC3 gene in this genotype increased four and twofold higher compared to the relative control at 2 and 4 days after stress, respectively. However, the expression of these genes in the susceptible genotype was constant or decreased relative to the control. Furthermore, the CarNAC3 and DREB2A genes showed higher and more effective expression than the WRKY gene. Overall, the results demonstrated that these TFs may play an important role to improve drought tolerance and have a potential to facilitate molecular breeding and development of drought-tolerant chickpea varieties. Keywords Drought · Chickpea · Transcription factors · Gene expression · qPCR
Introduction Chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) is the second most important legume crop, playing a vital role as food security in African and Asian countries (Roorkiwal et al. 2016). Chickpea seeds contains valuable micronutrients, proteins, carbohydrates, essential amino acids, and vitamins (Varshney et al. 2013), supplying a great source for human and animal diets. It also enhances the production of other cereals and soil fertility through nitrogen fixation (Hiremath et al. 2011). The most important countries producing chickpea are India, Turkey, * Saeedreza Vessal [email protected] 1
Biotechnology and Plant Breeding Dept., College of Agriculture, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Mashhad, Iran
Research Center for Plant Sciences, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Mashhad, Iran
2
Pakistan, Australia, Myanmar, Ethiopia, Iran, Mexico, Canada, and the United States. Chickpea is mainly cultivated under arid and semi-arid tropics which ar
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