Institutional Publications

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Seedling-stage salinity tolerance in rice: decoding the role of transcription factors
(John Wiley & Sons, 2022) Tiwari, Shalini; Nutan, Kamlesh Kant; Deshmukh, Rupesh; Sarsu, Fatma; Gupta, Kapuganti Jagadis; Singh, Anil K.; Singla-Pareek, Sneh L.; Pareek, Ashwani
Rice is an important staple food crop that feeds over half of the human population, particularly in developing countries. Increasing salinity is a major challenge for continuing rice production. Though rice is affected by salinity at all the developmental stages, it is most sensitive at the early seedling stage. The yield thus depends on how many seedlings can withstand saline water at the stage of transplantation, especially in coastal farms. The rapid development of ‘omics’ approaches has assisted researchers in identifying biological molecules that are responsive to salt stress. Several salinity-responsive quantitative trait loci (QTL) contributing to salinity tolerance have been identified and validated, making it essential to narrow down the search for the key genes within QTLs. Owing to the impressive progress of molecular tools, it is now clear that the response of plants towards salinity is highly complex, involving multiple genes, with a specific role assigned to the repertoire of transcription factors. Targeting the transcription factors for improving salinity tolerance can have an inbuilt advantage of influencing multiple downstream genes, which in turn can contribute towards tolerance to multiple stresses. This is the first comparative study for TF-driven salinity tolerance in contrasting rice cultivars at the seedling stage that shows how tolerant genotypes behave differently than sensitive ones in terms of stress tolerance. Understanding the complexity of salt-responsive transcription factor networks at the seedling stage will be helpful to alleviate crop resilience and prevent crop damage at an early growth stage in rice.
Expression of abiotic stress inducible ETHE1-like protein from rice is higher in roots and is regulated by calcium
(John Wiley & Sons, 2014) Kaur, Charanpreet; Mustafiz, Ananda; Sarkar, Ananda K.; Ariyadasa, Thilini U.; Singla-Pareek, Sneh L.; Sopory, Sudhir K.
ETHYLMALONIC ENCEPHALOPATHY PROTEIN 1 (ETHE1) encodes sulfur dioxygenase (SDO) activity regulating sulfide levels in living organisms. It is an essential gene and mutations in ETHE1 leads to ethylmalonic encephalopathy (EE) in humans and embryo lethality in Arabidopsis. At present, very little is known regarding the role of ETHE1 beyond the context of EE and almost nothing is known about factors affecting its regulation in plant systems. In this study, we have identified, cloned and characterized OsETHE1, a gene encoding ETHE1-like protein from Oryza sativa. ETHE1 proteins in general are most similar to glyoxalase II (GLYII) and hence OsETHE1 has been earlier annotated as OsGLYII1, a putative GLYII gene. Here we show that OsETHE1 lacks GLYII activity and is instead an ETHE1 homolog being localized in mitochondria like its human and Arabidopsis counterparts. We have isolated and analyzed 1618 bp OsETHE1 promoter (pOsETHE1) to examine the factors affecting OsETHE1 expression. For this, transcriptional promoter pOsETHE1: 5-bromo-5-chloro-3-indolyl-β-D-glucuronide (GUS) fusion construct was made and stably transformed into rice. GUS expression pattern of transgenic pOsETHE1:GUS plants reveal a high root-specific expression of OsETHE1. The pOsETHE1 activity was stimulated by Ca(II) and required light for induction. Moreover, pOsETHE1 activity was induced under various abiotic stresses such as heat, salinity and oxidative stress, suggesting a potential role of OsETHE1 in stress response.

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