Induced defence responses of contrasting bread wheat genotypes under differential salt stress imposition.

Plants, being sessile in nature, have developed mechanisms to cope with high salt concentrations in the soil. In this study, the effects of NaCl (50-200 mM) on expression of high-affinity potassium transporters (HKTs), antioxidant enzymes and their isozyme profiles were investigated in two contrasting bread wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) genotypes viz., HD2329 (salt-sensitive) and Kharchia65 (salt-tolerant). Kharchia65 can successfully grow in salt affected soils, while HD2329 cannot tolerate salt stress. Differential expression studies of two HKT genes (TaHKT2;1.1 and TaHKT2;3.1) revealed their up-regulated expression (~1.5-fold) in the salt-sensitive HD2329 and down-regulated (~5-fold) inducible expression in the salt-tolerant genotype (Kharchia65). Specific activity of antioxidant enzymes, viz. superoxide dismutase (SOD), peroxidase (POX), ascorbate peroxidase (APX), catalase (CAT) and glutathione reductase (GR) was found to be higher in the salt-tolerant genotype. Isozyme profile of two (POX and GR) antioxidant enzymes showed polymorphism between salt-tolerant and salt-sensitive genotypes. A new gene TaHKT2;3.1 was also identified and its expression profile and role in salt stress tolerance in wheat was also studied. Partial sequences of the TaHKT2;1.1 and TaHKT2;3.1 genes from bread wheat were submitted to the EMBL GenBank database. Our findings indicated that defence responses to salt stress were induced differentially in contrasting bread wheat genotypes which provide evidences for functional correlation between salt stress tolerance and differential biochemical and molecular expression patterns in bread wheat.

Physical mapping, expression analysis and polymorphism survey of resistance gene analogues on chromosome 11 of rice.

Rice is the fi rst cereal genome with a fi nished sequence and a model crop that has important syntenic relationships with other cereal species. The objectives of our study were to identify resistance gene analogue (RGA) sequences from chromosome 11 of rice, understand their expression in other cereals and dicots by in silico analysis, determine their presence on other rice chromosomes, and evaluate the extent of polymorphism and actual expression in a set of rice genotypes. A total of 195 RGAs were predicted and physically localised. Of these, 91.79% expressed in rice, and 51.28% expressed in wheat, which was the highest among other cereals. Among monocots, sugarcane showed the highest (78.92%) expression, while among dicots, RGAs were maximally expressed in Arabidopsis (11.79%). Interestingly, two of the chromosome 11-specifi c RGAs were found to be expressing in all the organisms studied. Eighty RGAs of chromosome 11 had signifi cant homology with chromosome 12, which was the maximum among all the rice chromosomes. Thirty-one per cent of the RGAs used in polymerase chain reaction (PCR) amplifi cation showed polymorphism in a set of rice genotypes. Actual gene expression analysis revealed post-inoculation induction of one RGA in the rice line IRBB-4 carrying the bacterial blight resistance gene Xa-4. Our results have implications for the development of sequence-based markers and functional validation of specifi c RGAs in rice.