Soybean (Glycine max) AALK1 modulated transcriptome under drought stress

In this project we were interested in uncovering the molecular mechanism of stress tolerance mediated by AALK1 in soybean (Glycine max). The understanding of the soybean root response to drought is critical for the effective management of abiotic stress as shown previously. We studied root gene expression changes due to drought stress in control and aalk1-RNAi silenced lines. We used RNA sequencing on the Illumina platform to provide a detailed analysis of soybean transcriptome in response to drought stress. Several categories of critical genes involved in drought response were identified. The findings expand our knowledge about the functional role of AALK1 as trans-activating kinase and putative transcriptional activator in drought stress, which can be utilized as a promising gene-based molecular marker in transgenic breeding for generating crop plants with improved drought tolerance.