title: Identification of water stress genes in Pinus pinaster Ait. by controlled progressive stress and suppression-subtractive hybridization.
abstract: Climate change is a major challenge particularly for forest tree species, which will have to face the severe alterations of environmental conditions with their current genetic pool. Thus, an understanding of their adaptive responses is of the utmost interest. In this work we have selected Pinus pinaster as a model species. This pine is one of the most important conifers (for which molecular tools and knowledge are far more scarce than for angiosperms) in the Mediterranean Basin, which is characterised in all foreseen scenarios as one of the regions most drastically affected by climate change, mainly because of increasing temperature and, particularly, by increasing drought. We have induced a controlled, increasing water stress by adding PEG to a hydroponic culture. We have generated a subtractive library, with the aim of identifying the genes induced by this stress and have searched for the most reliable expressional candidate genes, based on their overexpression during water stress, as revealed by microarray analysis and confirmed by RT-PCR. We have selected a set of 67 candidate genes belonging to different functional groups that will be useful molecular tools for further studies on drought stress responses, adaptation, and population genomics in conifers, as well as in breeding programs.
authors.affiliation: GENFOR Grupo de investigación en Genética y Fisiología Forestal, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, E-28040 Madrid, Spain.
authors.forename: Pedro
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Perdiguero
authors.forename: Carmen
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Collada
authors.forename: María Del Carmen
authors.initials: Mdel C
authors.lastname: Barbero
authors.forename: Gloria
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: García Casado
authors.forename: María Teresa
authors.initials: MT
authors.lastname: Cervera
authors.forename: Alvaro
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Soto
mesh_terms: D000222:Adaptation, Physiological / Q000235:genetics*; D055864:Droughts; D015870:Gene Expression; D018506:Gene Expression Regulation, Plant; D015723:Gene Library; D017343:Genes, Plant; D057232:Global Warming; D018527:Hydroponics; D019083:Mediterranean Region; D046228:Microarray Analysis; D009693:Nucleic Acid Hybridization / Q000379:methods; D028223:Pinus / Q000235:genetics* / Q000502:physiology; D011092:Polyethylene Glycols; D020133:Reverse Transcriptase Polymerase Chain Reaction; D013312:Stress, Physiological / Q000235:genetics*; D014197:Trees; D014867:Water
chemical_list: D014867:Water; D011092:Polyethylene Glycols