Large-scale analysis of drought stress-dependent TSS changes in Arabidopsis

Plants respond to drought stress at gene expression level, and various regulations could be involved in this process. One of the gene expression regulatory mechanisms, the usage of multiple transcription start sites (TSS), which leads to production of pre-mRNA isoforms, could play an important role. Here we are investigating TSS changes in response to drought stress in Arabidopsis. We conducted TSS-seq analysis using mRNA samples of Arabidopsis seedlings of WT and some knockout mutants which were subjected to drought stress for 3 h. A number of TSS changes were detected in this large-scale analysis. This result suggests that TSS changes are important for plants in adapting water-deficient environment.