Salt specific transcriptomic profiling in halophyte Dichanthium annulatum

A moderately salt tolerant halophytic plant, Dichanthium annulatum was selected for transcriptional profiling. Also known as marvel grass or Hindi grass, it is tolerant of varied soil conditions, including soils high in clay and sand, poorly drained soils, and soils that are somewhat alkaline and saline. It has been reported to tolerate salinity upto EC 30 dS/m (~ 300 mM NaCl). Dichanthium leaves were harvested at vegetative stage from salt treated and untreated plants (control) for RNA isolation and further transcriptomics. An average of 42.88 million raw sequencing reads (for control and stress samples) were obtained on Illumina HiSeq sequencer. Differential gene expression was analyzed between control and salt treated samples. Raw data generated on sequencer was checked for the quality using FastQC and pre processed with Cutadapt. DESeq, R package, was used for differential expression analysis.