Candidate regulators of drought stress in tomato revealed by comparative transcriptomic and proteomic analyses

Abstract

Drought is among the most common abiotic constraints of crop growth, development, and productivity. Integrating different omics approaches offers a possibility for deciphering the metabolic pathways and fundamental mechanisms involved in abiotic stress tolerance. Here, we explored the transcriptional and post-transcriptional changes in drought-stressed tomato plants using transcriptomic and proteomic profiles to determine the molecular dynamics of tomato drought stress responses. We identified 22467 genes and 5507 proteins, among which the expression of 3765 genes and 294 proteins was significantly changed under drought stress. Furthermore, the differentially expressed genes (DEGs) and differentially abundant proteins (DAPs) showed a good correlation (0.743). The results indicated that integrating different omics approaches is promising in exploring the multilayered regulatory mechanisms of plant drought resistance. Gene ontology (GO) and pathway analysis identified several GO terms and pathways related to stress resistance, including response to stress, abiotic stimulus, and oxidative stress. The plant hormone abscisic acid (ABA) plays pivotal roles in response to drought stress, ABA-response element binding factor (AREB) is a key positive regulator of ABA signaling. Moreover, our analysis indicated that drought stress increased the abscisic acid (ABA) content, which activated AREB1 expression to regulate the expression of TAS14, GSH-Px-1, and Hsp, ultimately improving tomato drought resistance. In addition, the yeast one-hybrid assay demonstrated that the AREB1 could bind the Hsp promoter to activate Hsp expression. Thus, this study involved a full-scale analysis of gene and protein expression in drought-stressed tomato, deepening the understanding of the regulatory mechanisms of the essential drought-tolerance genes in tomato.

Discrepancy of Growth Toxicity of Polystyrene Nanoplastics on Soybean (Glycine max) and Mung Bean (Vigna radiata)

“…The findings showed that the GCK vs. G100 group and GCK vs. G500 group dominantly showed common enrichment terms, including the response to oxidative stress and the defense response. Highly similar results were reported by Zhang et al, showing that oxidative stress may be a coping mechanism for soybean to resist negative external stimuli [53,54]. Specifically, the hydrogen peroxide catabolic process was enriched in the GCK vs. G100 group.…”

Transcriptome Analysis and Metabolic Profiling Reveal the Key Regulatory Pathways in Drought Stress Responses and Recovery in Tomatoes

“…High-throughput techniques for omics-based analyses may be combined to elucidate the mechanisms regulating complex plant traits, including drought stress resistance in tomatoes, which is controlled by diverse factors. Only a few studies have been conducted on tomato drought tolerance and recovery [34][35][36][37][38][39]. Consequently, differences in gene expression and metabolite contents between tomato cultivars and wild species are largely unknown.…”

Mining differential gene expression in Fagus crenata seedlings in response to short-term soil drought stress

“…These changes in phenotypic traits over short timescales are driven by differential gene expression, which can be measured by assessing the expression levels of mRNA found in plant tissues (Shanker et al 2014). Differential expression analyses comparing water-stressed plants with controls have identi ed candidate genes relating to acclimation under short-term drought stress in a wide range of species, including oak (Gugger et al 2017), poplar (Yang et al 2023) and pine (Li et al 2024), as well as annual plants such as maize (Le et al 2012) and tomato (Liu et al 2023). Recent advances in nextgeneration sequencing technology can yield large quantities of mRNA sequence data in a short time period (RNA-seq), and thus provide a cost-e cient and powerful tool for differential expression analyses (Deshpande et al 2023).…”