Impact of redox control on transcriptional reprograming for salt tolerance in coastal rice landraces

The current study compares the transcriptomic data sets of post-imbibitional NaCl salinity stress (PISS)- raised seedlings of two contrasting land races of coastal areas of Sundarban Bangladesh (Oryza sativa L., Landraces Kutepatnai and Charobalam) for unfolding genetic regulation of salinity stress under altered redox and metabolic landscape. Illumina platform-based RNA-seq analysis exposed important landrace-specific gene expression under PISS that substantiate the data of altered redox cue (relative changes in redox interactome status) and changes in ion and hormonal homeostasis. Heat map generation from selected transcripts with their functional annotations identified genes that are suggestively expressed and mainly associated with redox signaling pathway, metabolisms, cell wall organization, transport, cell cycle regulation and molecular trafficking. Comparative analysis of gene ontology revealed that salinity resistance of Kutepatnai is attributable to superior expression of genes associated with cell signaling, cell proliferation, transporter and molecular transducer activity, biological and metabolic regulation etc. Genes associated with redox regulation and coding transcription factors got significantly over expressed in landrace Kutepatnai vis-a-vis Charobalam. We suggest the significance of the role of redox signalling and MAP kinase pathways for inducing important transcription factors necessary for up-regulation of defence genes necessary for salinity tolerance.