Lack of neighbor perception in soft wheat increases weed-induced yield losses.

Weeds are one of the major constraints for wheat productivity, causing significant yield losses worldwide. While chemical control is the most used practice to overcome weed damage, its efficacy is challenged by increasing weed resistance to most used herbicides, which is an expanding phenomenon caused by herbicide overuse/misuse. Modern wheat varieties are less able to perceive the presence of weeds than old varieties and are therefore less competitive against them and require chemical control to ensure adequate yields.

Determination of Differential Alternative Splicing Under Stress Conditions.

Alternative splicing (AS) is an important mechanism contributing to stress-induced regulation of gene expression and proteome diversity. Massive sequencing technologies allow the identification of transcripts generated via stress-responsive AS, potentially important for adaptation to stress conditions. Several bioinformatics tools have been developed to identify differentially expressed alternative splicing events/transcripts from RNA-sequencing results.

Transcriptomic landscape of tomato traditional long shelf-life landraces under low water regimes.

'Corbarino' (COR) and 'Lucariello' (LUC) belong to the family of Mediterranean long shelf-life tomato landraces, producing high quality fruits under low water input cultivation regime in their traditional cultivation area. Understanding the morpho-physiological and molecular details of the peculiar drought stress tolerance of these two genotypes may be key to their valorization as breeding material. RNA sequencing of leaf samples of COR and LUC subjected to drought stress by water withholding in a semi-controlled greenhouse identified 3089 and 2135 differentially expressed genes respectively.

Transcriptomic and splicing changes underlying tomato responses to combined water and nutrient stress.

Tomato is a horticultural crop of high economic and nutritional value. Suboptimal environmental conditions, such as limited water and nutrient availability, cause severe yield reductions. Thus, selection of genotypes requiring lower inputs is a goal for the tomato breeding sector.

Alternative splicing in plant abiotic stress responses.

Modifications of the cellular proteome pool upon stress allow plants to tolerate environmental changes. Alternative splicing is the most significant mechanism responsible for the production of multiple protein isoforms from a single gene. The spliceosome, a large ribonucleoprotein complex, together with several associated proteins, controls this pre-mRNA processing, adding an additional level of regulation to gene expression.