Investigating post-transcriptional regulation of jasmonate signalling for improving rice response to environmental stresses

C. BHATIA,  P. SINGH, J. GIRI

National Institute of plant genome research, Aruna Asaf Ali Marg, 110067, New Delhi, India

Rice is a staple food worldwide; however, it is exposed simultaneously to various kinds of stresses. The plant lipid-derived hormone jasmonic acid (JA) controls defense, stress responses and is also an important regulator of growth and development. However, exaggerated JA signalling would trigger an overactivation of the defense response which in turn comes at the expense of plant growth. Alternative splicing (AS) is a crucial post-transcriptional mechanism to reprogram gene expression profiles and expand the transcriptome and proteome diversity.  We have performed the meta-analysis of publicly available RNA-Seq datasets to describe the AS landscape of jasmonate signalling genes and splicing factors (SFs). JAZ repressors of JA signalling have been found as one of the targets to attenuate JA responses over extended exposure to JA. Interestingly, there is a conservation of an intron in the degron bearing JAS motif of JAZ genes in evolutionary diverse plant species. Intron retention event was detected in eight JAZ through Reverse transcription (RT-PCR).  Our data suggests that intron retention introduces a premature stop codon in the transcript resulting in the formation of truncated ΔPYJAZ isoforms with dominant negative effect on hyperactivated JA signalling. Thus, AS of JA signalling genes contribute towards desensitization of JA pathway.