Transcriptomic responses to salt stress in tomato seedling treated with carbon-based nanomaterials

Carbon-based nanomaterials (CBNs) such as carbon nanotubes (CNTs) and graphene can be beneficial to crops exposed to abiotic stresses such as high salinity. Our findings suggest that the Improvement observed in stressed crops treated with CBNs can be associated with CBN-induced restoration of gene expression.RNA-Seq approach allowed us to analyze the total gene expression of CBN-treated tomato plants exposed to salt stress. CBN treatment of NaCl-exposed tomato seedlings led to full or partial restoration of 1639 and 1391 salt-affected transcripts, respectively. Of the genes with restored expression, many of them were identified as major stress-response genes and major transcriptional factors (aquaporins,dehydrins, and heat shock proteins/co-chaperons, NAC, WRKY) and were associated with key stress-signaling pathways (ABA-signaling, InsP3 signaling, and MAPK signaling) in all three tested plant species. These findings provide evidence that CBNs can provide halotolerance by normalizing the expression of affected stress genes.