ANNOUNCEMENTS
Plants, being sessile, are exposed to ever-changing climatic conditions, which imply damaging effects on growth and development of plant, impacting crop yields and global food supply. The repercussions of global warming have led to an increase in ambient temperature and therefore, high-temperature stress (HTS) has become a significant factor influencing crop productivity. Notably, HTS can impair every stage of plant development, from germination to reproduction, causing multiple negative impacts on yield and productivity of economically important crops. It leads to variety of changes in plants at physiological, morphological, biochemical and molecular level. In general, plants develop various adaptive, avoidance, or acclimation responses to cope with damages caused by rising temperature. Chickpea, the third most important food legume, is highly sensitive to HTS and suffers a decline in its productivity due to elevated temperature. The present study provides a comprehensive overview of stress tolerance in chickpea using in silico and in planta approaches. Previously in our lab, a comparative proteomics analysis of treated and untreated chickpea seedlings led to the identification of an array of differentially regulated proteins. Proteomics refers to global analysis of proteins, which gives an edge to compare the alteration of proteins, while in silico analysis provides a holistic platform for elucidation of gene function. The screening of the proteome led us to novel HTS-responsive proteins (HRPs), hereafter referred to as HRP1. The objectives of the study comprise the expression analysis of HRP1 under various conditions, namely high-temperature, low-temperature, dehydration, hypersalinity, oxidative stress and hormonal treatments, in silico analysis of HRP1 and its functional characterization in eukaryotic systems. This study establishes a fundamental basis for understanding the mechanism/s of tolerance in chickpea, which would help in developing genetically-engineered resilient chickpea varieties to circumvent the trending yield loss.
Keywords: High-temperature stress, chickpea, HTS-responsive protein, relative expression, in silico analysis
