TRANSCRIPTOME ANALYSIS OF Portulaca oleracea UNDER DROUGHT STRESS CONDITIONS

D'ANDREA, RODRIGO MATIAS; ANDREO, CARLOS SANTIAGO; LARA, MARÍA VALERIA

Puerto Madryn, Chubut

Congreso; XLVI Reunión Anual Sociedad Argentina de Investigación en Bioquímica y Biología Molecular, 46 Annual Meeting Argentine Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology; 2010

Sociedad Argentina de Investigación en Bioquímica y Biología Molecular

Drought stress is undoubtedly one of the environmental types ofstress that more limits growth and crop yields, producing a 50%reduction in the performance of the main crops. Therefore, it is veryimportant the identification of new elements involved in theadaptation to this type of stress. Portulaca oleracea is a C4 plant thatadapts to drought stress by changing its photosynthetic metabolism.In the present work, the “differential display” technique was used toidentify transcripts showing changes in their expression in leaves ofplants under the following conditions: well-watered, afterwithholding water during 21 days and after 21 days of re-watering.Two-hundred and two differentially expressed transcripts wereobtained of which 53% were induced under stress conditions, the 25% were repressed by drought and 22% were differentially expressedonly after re-watering. Eighty percent of the identified sequencescorresponded to unigenes. Half of these sequences corresponded tounknown sequences. The results obtained in the present work offerthe possibility to identify new molecular factors involved in theadaptation to drought stress conditions.