Agrotechnology

The role of alternative splicing in two maize lines under herbicide stress conditions

2^nd International Conference on Agricultural & Horticultural Sciences

Radisson Blu Plaza Hotel, Hyderabad, India February 03-05, 2014

Joanna Gracz, A Tyczewska, A Hoffa, A Zmienko, A Swiercz, J Blazewicz, and T Twardowski

Posters: Agrotechnol

Abstract:

Plants, as sessile organisms, must adapt their growth and metabolic style to a changing environment. Splicing is one of the mechanisms which play an important role in plant adaptation and is an additional element of fitness benefit adjusted to the limited capacity of genome size. Studies of splicing and its role in diverse aspect of cell biology, pathology and stress response, has remained undescribed for many plant species, including maize. Through the mechanism of alternative splicing, exons from primary transcripts (pre- mRNA) with multiple introns may undergo ligation in many different ways generating multiple proteins from single gene. This process can affect mRNA stability and translation efficiency as well as activity, cellular localization, regulation and stability of coding protein. For better characterization of alternative splicing role in plant herbicide stress response, we sequenced transcriptomes of two maize breed lines - sensitive and tolerant to herbicide RoundUp. We used Illumina next-generation sequencer Genome Analyzer IIx and we conducted pair-end sequencing. As a result we obtained 35 to 76 mln 50nt reads per sample. Using bioinformatics tools such as BowTie, TopHat, Cufflinks, Cuffdiff and CummRbund, we managed to identify between sensitive and tolerant maize line. We also managed to identify different types of splicing events and confirm gene expression using real-time PCR.

Biography :

Joanna Gracz has graduated in Biotechnology in University of Life Sciences, Poznań and started her Ph.D. studies in 2009 in Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry, PAS, Poznań as a member of Protein Biosynthesis Group. She is interested in molecular biology of plants related with stress response.