Transcriptome analysis of lentil (Lens culinaris Medikus) in response to seedling drought stress.

Background: Drought stress is one of the most harmful abiotic stresses in crop plants. As a moderately drought tolerant crop, lentil is a major crop in rainfed areas and a suitable candidate for drought stress tolerance research work. Screening for drought tolerance stress under hydroponic conditions at seedling stage with air exposure is an efficient technique to select genotypes with contrasting traits. Transcriptome analysis provides valuable resources, especially for lentil, as here the information on complete genome sequence is not available. Hence, the present studies were carried out.

Results: This study was undertaken to understand the biochemical mechanisms and transcriptome changes involved in imparting adaptation to drought stress at seedling stage in drought-tolerant (PDL-2) and drought-sensitive (JL-3) cultivars. Among different physiological and biochemical parameters, a significant increase was recorded in proline, glycine betaine contents and activities of SOD, APX and GPX in PDL-2 compared to JL-3while chlorophyll, RWC and catalase activity decreased significantly in JL-3. Transcriptome changes between the PDL-2 and JL-3 under drought stress were evaluated using Illumina HiSeq 2500 platform. Total number of bases ranged from 5.1 to 6.7 Gb. Sequence analysis of control and drought treated cDNA libraries of PDL-2 and JL-3 produced 74032, 75500, 78328 and 81523 contigs, respectively with respective N50 value of 2011, 2008, 2000 and 1991. Differential gene expression of drought treated genotypes along with their controls revealed a total of 11,435 upregulated and 6,934 downregulated transcripts. For functional classification of DEGs, KEGG pathway annotation analysis extracted a total of 413 GO annotation terms where 176 were within molecular process, 128 in cellular and 109 in biological process groups.

Conclusion: The transcriptional profiles provide a foundation for deciphering the underlying mechanism for drought tolerance in lentil. Transcriptional regulation, signal transduction and secondary metabolism in two genotypes revealed significant differences at seedling stage under severe drought. Our finding suggests role of candidate genes for improving drought tolerance in lentil.