Journal Article

Drought mediated physiological and molecular changes in muskmelon (Cucumis melo L.)

Ansari, Waquar Akhter, Singh, Bijendra, Pandey, Sudhakar, Ahmad, Javed, Atri, Neelam, Kumar, Ram, Qureshi, Mohammad Irfan, Rai, Vandna

2019

Overview

Water deficiency up to a certain level and duration leads to a stress condition called drought. It is a multi-dimensional stress causing alteration in the physiological, morphological, biochemical, and molecular traits in plants resulting in improper plant growth and development. Drought is one of the major abiotic stresses responsible for loss of crops including muskmelon (Cucumis melo. L). Muskmelon genotype SC-15, which exhibits high drought resistance as reported in our earlier reports, was exposed to deficient water condition and studied for alteration in physiological, molecular and proteomic profile changes in the leaves. Drought stress results in reduced net photosynthetic rate (Pn), stomatal conductance (Gs) and transpiration (E) rate. With expanded severity of drought, declination recorded in content of total chlorophyll and carotenoid while enhancement observed in phenol content indicating generation of oxidative stress. In contrary, activities of catalase (CAT), superoxide dismutase (SOD), ascorbate peroxidase (APX), and guaiacol (POD) were increased under drought stress. Peptide mass fingerprinting (PMF) showed that drought increased the relative abundance of 38 spots while decreases10 spots of protein. The identified proteins belong to protein synthesis, photosynthesis, nucleotide biosynthesis, stress response, transcription regulation, metabolism, energy and DNA binding. A drought-induced MADS-box transcription factor was identified. The present findings indicate that under drought muskmelon elevates the abundance of defense proteins and suppresses catabolic proteins. The data obtained exhibits possible mechanisms adopted by muskmelon to counter the impacts of drought induced stress.

• Publisher: Public Library of Science,Public Library of Science (PLoS)
• Subject: Abiotic stress / Ascorbic acid / Biochemistry / Bioinformatics / Biology and Life Sciences / Biosynthesis / Biotechnology / Catalase / Cellular stress response / Chlorophyll / Chlorophyll - metabolism / Conductance / Cucumis melo / Cucumis melo - growth & development / Cucumis melo - metabolism / Cucumis melo - physiology / Declination / Dehydration / Deoxyribonucleic acid / DNA / DNA binding / Drought / Drought resistance / Droughts / Ecology and Environmental Sciences / EDTA / Electrophoresis, Gel, Two-Dimensional / Energy metabolism / Environmental impact / Fingerprinting / Flowers & plants / Gene expression / Gene Expression Regulation, Plant / Gene regulation / Genetic aspects / Genotype & phenotype / Genotypes / Guaiacol / Influence / L-Ascorbate peroxidase / Leaves / Mass spectrometry / Metabolism / Muskmelon / Nucleotides / Oxidative stress / Peptide mapping / Peptides / Peroxidase / Phenols / Phenols (Class of compounds) / Photosynthesis / Physical Sciences / Physiological aspects / Physiology / Plant biochemistry / Plant growth / Plant Proteins - metabolism / Plant sciences / Plant Transpiration / Plants (botany) / Povidone / Protein biosynthesis / Protein synthesis / Proteins / Proteomics / Rain / Relative abundance / Research and Analysis Methods / Resistance / Scientific imaging / Seeds / Spectrometry, Mass, Matrix-Assisted Laser Desorption-Ionization / Stomata / Stomatal conductance / Stress (Physiology) / Sugarcane / Superoxide dismutase / Superoxides / Transcription (Genetics) / Transcriptome / Transpiration