Transcriptome profiling of short-term response to chilling stress in resistant and susceptible rice seedlings

The aim of this study is to profile the short-term transcriptional response of rice to chilling at different timings, and to identify genes that are putatively responsible for stress-tolerance. Thaibonnet and Volano were selected as susceptible and resistant rice cultivars, respectively. According to bibliography and to our quantitative PCR experiment results, we inferred that 2 and 10 hours after the beginning of stress are the time-points in which short-term “early” and “late” transcriptional response to chilling is more evident. RNA from Thaibonnet and Volano plants after 0 (not stressed), 2 and 10 hours at 10°C were extracted and sequenced. Differential short-term responses to low temperatures at two different timings (to which we refer as “early” and “late”) between those two cultivars were analysed by RNA-seq. Our study may contribute to elucidate the molecular mechanisms involved in rice response to chilling and to identify novel genes putatively involved in low temperature tolerance.