Differential modulation of heat inducible genes across diverse genotypes and molecular cloning of a sHSP from Pearl millet

Abstract

Environmental stresses negatively influence survival, biomass and grain yield of most crops. Towards functionally clarifying the role of heat responsive genes in Pearl millet under high temperature stress, the present study were carried out using semi quantitative RT- PCR for transcript expression profiling of hsf and hsps in 8 different inbred lines at seedling stage, which was earlier identified as thermo tolerant/susceptible lines through initial screening for thermo tolerance using membrane stability index among 38 elite genotypes. Transcript expression pattern suggested existence of differential response among different genotypes in response to heat stress in the form of accumulation of heat shock responsive gene transcripts. Genotypes WGI 126, TT-1 and MS 841B responded positively towards high temperature stress for transcript accumulation for both Pgcp 70 and Pghsf and also had better growth under heat stress, whereas PPMI 69 showed the least responsiveness to transcript induction supporting the membrane stability index data for scoring thermotolerance, suggesting the efficacy of transcript expression profiling as a molecular based screening technique for identification of thermotolerant genes and genotypes at particular crop growth stages. As to demonstrate this, a full length cDNA of Pghsp 16.97 was cloned from the thermotolerant cultivar, WGI 126 and characterized for thermotolerance. The results of demonstration set forth the transcript profiling for heat tolerant genes can be a very useful technique for high throughput screening of tolerant genotypes at molecular level from large cultivar collections at seedling stage.