RNA-seq of rice seedlings (leaves) under cold stress

Stress may be defined as any change in the external or internal environment of an organism, which adversely affects cellular homoeostasis. Plants are constantly subjected to various biotic and abiotic stresses which retard their normal growth and development. Plants mount a defence at the level of protection and adaptation to cope up with such stress conditions. Crop plants suffer heavy loss in yield owing to various abiotic stresses, such as salinity stress, cold stress, drought stress, and soil metal toxicity. Rice (Oryza sativa), a major crop plant requires water-logging conditions for proper growth and is, therefore, more prone to such abiotic stresses. Similar to other plant species originating in tropical and sub-tropical areas, rice is sensitive to cold stress. Rice cells are reported to perceive the cold stress by changes in membrane rigidity, the physical state of membrane proteins and changes in the metabolite concentrations. Furthermore, increased membrane rigidity due to low-temperature stress leads to increase in the electrolytic leakage, which therefore triggers the activation of cold-responsive genes. In plants, response to any stress condition involves a cellular reprogramming which mainly encompasses changes due to differential expression of various stress responsive genes. In the present study, the transcriptome profile for rice plants were generated using RNA-sequencing. The comparative study of the transcriptome of control and cold treated plants for the duration of 2 hours, will help to understand the regulation of transcription network of cold response.