Differential transcriptional regulation of drought stress revealed by comparative RNA-seq analysis of contrasting indica rice from North East India

In this work transcriptomic differences associated with drought stress tolerance were examined to identify the mechanism of drought stress response in stress-tolerant (Tampha) and stress-sensitive (Chandan) varieties identified in our previous work. Greater number of differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were induced by drought stress in the tolerant variety than the sensitive variety. Co-expression analysis of DEGs implied that coordinated gene regulation by transcription factors and miRNAs were predominant in regulation of DEGs. From the drought stress inducible genes with higher expression level in the stress-tolerant variety, we could identify sixty-one genes related to abiotic stimulus response and carbohydrate metabolic process, including dehydrins, glycosyltransferases and DnaK molecular chaperones and several transcription factors.