Vol. 12, Issue 9 (2023)

Author(s):
Nikhil Chand, Rekha Dixit, Pankaj Kumar, Kuldeep Tyagi, Neelesh Kapoor and Hira Arif

Abstract:
Molecular responses to phosphorus deficiency have stimulated research towards the development of crops with improved phosphorus use efficiency. Transcriptome profiling data for studying phosphorus stress-responsive genes have indicated variations in levels of gene expression in wheat, but only limited studies have been carried out on co-expression network analysis for the identification of master regulators for phosphorus stress tolerance. In this study, we performed unweighted network analysis and identified hub genes for phosphorus stress tolerance from a total of 798 differentially expressed genes from publicly available transcriptomic data. Out of the total 3 modules identified from the analysis, the one with the most nodes and 260 edges was selected for the identification of hub genes. Based on highly dense interactions, we identified 14 intra-modular hub genes, leading to a total of 26 potential candidate genes. The total top 10 bottle neck genes were identified, which consist of 3 hub genes and the total top 10 genes on the basis of degree were identified through Cytohubba. The GO analysis of hub genes identified the maximum number of hub genes involved in photosynthesis and related processes. The KEGG analysis of hub genes found them to be related to photosynthesis, carbon metabolism, and fixation. Thus, our study not only provided an effective approach for studying phosphorus stress tolerance in wheat but also identified major candidate genes that can be further validated by functional genomics.