Characterization of physiological response and identification of associated genes under heat stress in rice seedlings

Global warming, which is caused by greenhouse gas emissions, makes food crops more vulnerable to heat stress. Understanding the heat stress-related mechanisms in crops and classifying heat stress-related genes can increase our knowledge in heat-resistant molecular biology and propel developments in molecular design breeding, which can help rice cope with unfavorable temperatures. In this study, we carried out a physiological analysis of rice plants after heat stress. The results show a dramatic increase in malondialdehyde contents and SOD activities. We successfully isolated 11 heat-related rice genes with known function annotation through DNSH, which is an improved SSH method for screening long cDNA fragments. The reanalysis of microarray data from public database revealed that all these genes displayed various expression patterns after heat stress, drought, cold and salt. Quantitative real-time reverse transcription PCR was also performed to validate the expression of these genes after heat stress. The expressions in 10 genes were all significantly changed except for contig 77, which is a CBL-interacting protein kinase. Several reports have been published about the members of the same gene family.

► Understanding heat stress mechanisms could develop heat-tolerant rice cultivars.
► MDA content and SOD activity can be used as biomarkers in rice under heat stress.
► Eleven rice genes were successfully isolated through DNSH method.
► Microarray data confirmed various expression of 11 genes under abiotic stress.
► QPCR was performed to validate the expression of these genes after heat stress.