Genome-wide temporal-spatial gene expression profiling of drought responsiveness in rice

Rice is highly sensitive to drought, and the effect of drought may vary with the different genotypes and development stages. Genome-wide gene expression profiling was used as the initial point to dissect molecular genetic mechanism of this complex trait and provide valuable information for the improvement of drought tolerance in rice. Affymetrix rice genome array containing 48,564 japonica and 1,260 indica sequences was used to analyze the gene expression pattern of rice exposed to drought stress. The transcriptome from leaf, root, and young panicle at three developmental stages was comparatively analyzed combined with bioinformatics exploring drought stress related cis-elements. In this study, the gene expression patterns across six tissues including leaves and roots at tillering stage and panicle elongation stage, leaves and young panicle at booting stage ( TL: leaves at tillering stage; TR: roots at tillering stage; PL: leaves at panicle elongation stage; PR: roots at panicle elongation stage; BP: young panicle at booting stage; BL: leaves at booting stage) were characterized by using the Affymetrix rice microarray platform based on a drought tolerant rice line derived from IR64.