RT Journal Article SR Electronic T1 Gene regulation mechanism in drought-responsive grapevine leaves as revealed by transcriptomic analysis JF bioRxiv FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory SP 065136 DO 10.1101/065136 A1 Muhammad Salman Haider A1 Cheng Zhang A1 Tariq Pervaiz A1 Ting Zheng A1 Chao bo Zhang A1 Chen Lide A1 Lingfie Shangguan A1 Jinggui Fang YR 2016 UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/07/21/065136.abstract AB The transcriptome of drought-stressed grapevine leaves was analyzed using RNA-sequencing (RNA-seq) technology and compared. In this experiment, 12,451 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were recorded in response to drought by RNA-seq, which includes 7,983 up-regulated and 4,468 down-regulated transcripts, proposing that drought stress has induced/repressed many genes. Biological and physiological analysis revealed that drought has influenced the chlorophyll metabolism and photosynthetic activity in grapevine leaves. Besides, various defensive mechanism-related pathways including, reactive oxygen species (ROS), hormonal signal transduction, proline metabolism, biosynthesis of secondary metabolites, heat-shock proteins, and pathogenesis-related protein were also elucidated to understand drought-resistance related gene induction. Therefore, the transcriptional activity of ROS along with antioxidant enzymes, stress-related proteins, proline and secondary metabolites were strongly induced and played the tolerance-related role in response to drought stress. Moreover, an increased level of abscisic acid (ABA) and brassinosteroids (BRs) at physiological and transcriptomic level proved the fact that both hormones have a key defensive role against drought stress in grapevine leaves. In general, these findings will provide the drought tolerance-related gene information, which could be further used for developing drought-resistant grapevine varieties.