MOTIVATION A fundamental problem of computational genomics is identifying the genes that respond to certain endogenous cues and environmental stimuli. This problem can be referred to as targeted gene finding. Since gene regulation is mainly determined by the binding of transcription factors and cis-regulatory DNA sequences, most existing gene annotation methods, which exploit the conservation o...

Ethylene response factor (ERF) proteins are important plant-specific transcription factors. Increasing evidence shows that ERF proteins regulate plant pathogen resistance, abiotic stress response and plant development through interaction with different stress responsive pathways. Previously, we revealed that overexpression of TERF1 in tobacco activates a cluster gene expression through interact...

Plant-specific NAC proteins are one of the largest families of transcription factors in plants, and members of this family have been characterized with roles in the regulation of diverse biological processes, including development and stress responses. In the present study, we identified 101 putative NAC domain-encoding genes (BdNACs) through systematic sequence analysis in Brachypodium distach...

Lipid transfer proteins (LTPs) are a class of cysteine-rich soluble proteins having small molecular weights. LTPs participate in flower and seed development, cuticular wax deposition, also play important roles in pathogen and abiotic stress responses. A non-specific LTP gene (SiLTP) was isolated from a foxtail millet (Setaria italica) suppression subtractive hybridization library enriched for d...

Extremes of temperatures, drought and salinity cause widespread crop losses throughout the world and impose severe limitations on the amount of land that can be used for agricultural purposes. Hence, there is an urgent need to develop crops that perform better under such abiotic stress conditions. Here, we discuss intriguing, recent evidence that circadian clock contributes to plants' ability t...

Peanut (Arachis hypogaea L.) ranks fifth among the world oil crops and is widely grown in India and neighbouring countries. Due to its large and unknown genome size, studies on genomics and genetic modification of peanut are still scanty as compared to other model crops like Arabidopsis, rice, cotton and soybean. Because of its favourable cultivation in semi-arid regions, study on abiotic stres...

Gene expression varies widely in natural populations, yet the proximate and ultimate causes of this variation are poorly known. Understanding how variation in gene expression affects abiotic stress tolerance, fitness, and adaptation is central to the field of evolutionary genetics. We tested the hypothesis that genes with natural genetic variation in their expression responses to abiotic stress...

Stress associated proteins (SAPs) are the A20/AN1 zinc-finger containing proteins which can regulate the stress signaling in plants. The rice SAP protein, OsSAP1 has been shown to confer abiotic stress tolerance to plants, when overexpressed, by modulating the expression of endogenous stress-related genes. To further understand the mechanism of OsSAP1-mediated stress signaling, OsSAP1 interacti...

Gene expression varies widely in natural populations, yet the proximate and ultimate causes of this variation are poorly known. Understanding how variation in gene expression affects abiotic stress tolerance, fitness, and adaptation is central to the field of evolutionary genetics. We tested the hypothesis that genes with natural genetic variation in their expression responses to abiotic stress...