Transcriptome analysis of root traits to improve drought tolerance in sorghum bicolor

In order to elucidate gene networks in response to moisture stress, a global overview of transcriptome was obtained by generating RNA-Seq libraries. Out of 136.9 million reads that were generated across the sorghum genome for all three stressed and one controltreatments, 94.7 million reads aligned uniquely to the sorghum genome. A total of 34,569 gene models in each treatment could be resolved. 4,728 unique genes were classified as differentially expressed genes, which were characterized in three main gene ontology viz; biological class, molecular function and cellular component. Of which 1604 genes were upregulated and 3,124 genes were downregulated among all treatments as compare to control treatment. The upregulated genes that were categorized under response to abiotic stress, their fold change of expression has been compared in mild, moderate and severe, between mild and moderate stress, between moderate and severe stress and for the genes which are uniquely upregulated in moderate and severe stress. In total, we revealed the transcriptomes of the sorghum cv. M35-1 to reveal the overall transcriptional landscape in drought stress at maximal resolution.