Transcriptomic approaches for the identification of drought-responsive genes in cotton

Functional Genomics

oral

Park, Wonkeun; Udall, Joshua A.; Page, Justin T.; Bowman, Megan; Bauer, Phil; Campbell, B. Todd

Campbell, B. Todd

Campbell, B. Todd

Water-deficit stress is an increasing concern in cotton production and can result in severe yield losses with dire economic consequences. To that end, it is important to understand drought resistance mechanisms at the gene expression level to enable the development of cotton cultivars that can provide more dependable production under water-deficit stress. For the identification of differentially expressed transcripts under water-deficit stress, an RNA-Seq experiment was performed using field grown cotton plants (Gossypium hirsutum cv. Siokra L-23) that were subjected to different water supplies- well watered and naturally rain fed, respectively. In total, nearly 300 million trimmed Illumina sequence reads were obtained almost equally from leaf and root tissues of well watered and water-deficit treated plants. These reads were computationally mapped to the annotated genes of the draft D-genome sequence. Analyses on differentially expressed genes are under way. These data will help efforts to understand the complex responses governing transcriptomic regulatory mechanisms and identify candidate genes that should benefit advanced plant breeding programs for the cotton and other crops.