Proceedings of the XLV Italian Society of Agricultural Genetics - SIGA Annual Congress

Salsomaggiore Terme, Italy - 26/29 September, 2001

ISBN 88-900622-1-5

Poster Abstract

TRANSCRIPT PROFILES OF BARLEY DROUGHT STRESS RESPONSE MONITORED BY MICROARRAY ANALYSIS

TALAMÈ V.*^,**, OZTURK Z.N.*^,***, MICHALOWSKI C.B.*^,****, TUBEROSA R.**, GOZUKIRMIZI N.***, BOHNERT H.J.*^,****

* Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics, University of Arizona, Biosciences West, Tucson, AZ 85721-0088, USA

** Department of Agroenvironmental Science and Technology, University of Bologna, Italy

*** TUBITAK, Marmara Research Center, Research Institute for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology, 41470 Gebze/Kocaeli, Turkey

**** Departments of Plant Biology and of Crop Sciences, University of Illinois, 1201 W. Gregory Drive, Urbana, IL 61801, USA

microarray analysis, cDNA, drought stress, barley

The adaptive response of plants to drought involves many complex genetic, molecular and physiological mechanisms that have been the object of different approach studies in various species. The integration of this information through a functional genomics study could help to unravel the complexity of drought stress response and to more properly devise strategies to improve drought tolerance.

So far, microarray analysis for responses to drought stress conditions in cereals have been performed on samples under extremely high stress treatments (shock). In the present study, changes in regulated sequences under drought stress conditions closer to a natural situation were considered and compared with the results obtained from shocked samples. For this purpose, transcript profiles of two barley (Hordeum vulgare L.) Mediterranean varieties (Tadmor and Er/Apm) were investigated. Drought stress was applied at the four-leaf stage by witholding water for an eleven days period. Leaf samples for cDNA isolation were collected at several stress intensities measured as soil moisture values, relative water content (RWC) and abscisic acid (ABA) concentration. The results of microarray hybridizations with about 1500 DNA elements derived from cDNA libraries of 6h and 10h drought-stressed and unstressed barley plants will be presented and discussed.