title: Computational gene expression profiling under salt stress reveals patterns of co-expression.
abstract: Plants respond differently to environmental conditions. Among various abiotic stresses, salt stress is a condition where excess salt in soil causes inhibition of plant growth. To understand the response of plants to the stress conditions, identification of the responsible genes is required. Clustering is a data mining technique used to group the genes with similar expression. The genes of a cluster show similar expression and function. We applied clustering algorithms on gene expression data of Solanum tuberosum showing differential expression in Capsicum annuum under salt stress. The clusters, which were common in multiple algorithms were taken further for analysis. Principal component analysis (PCA) further validated the findings of other cluster algorithms by visualizing their clusters in three-dimensional space. Functional annotation results revealed that most of the genes were involved in stress related responses. Our findings suggest that these algorithms may be helpful in the prediction of the function of co-expressed genes.
authors.affiliation: Biotechnology Division, CSIR-Central Institute of Medicinal and Aromatic Plants, Post Office CIMAP, Lucknow 226015, India.
authors.lastname: Sanchita
authors.affiliation: Biotechnology Division, CSIR-Central Institute of Medicinal and Aromatic Plants, Post Office CIMAP, Lucknow 226015, India.
authors.forename: Ashok
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Sharma
keywords: Abiotic stress; Clustering algorithms; Co-expression; Functional annotation; Gene expression