Baibhav Kumar

Pearl millet, scientifically named Pennisetum glaucum L. (2n=14) is an annual C4 grass of family poaceae and sub-family panicoideae. It is also known as bajra, cattail millet, bulrush millet and dark millet. Pearl millet is the world’s 5th most important cereal crop and mostly grown by the poor and marginal farmers in arid and semi-arid tropics of Asia and Africa, due to its less intensive agronomic practices like less fertilizers and limited irrigation input. Pearl millet is cultivated mainly for its grains but also used as feed material for cattle, poultry, fish etc. Pearl millet crop is able to perform well in drought conditions where most of the cereals like wheat, rice and maize fails. So, understanding the molecular mechanism of the responses of pearl millet to adverse conditions is important. Key candidate genes controlling drought response in Indian pearl millet have been discovered and reported but lncRNA still remains uncovered. Expression of candidate genes are controlled by microRNA, TFs and lncRNA. The study aims at identification of drought responsive lncRNAs and development of a web genomic resource for user friendly access of the investigation findings, which is otherwise lacking in this crop. A total of 879 lncRNAs were identified out of which 209 (leaf control, leaf treated), 198 (leaf treated, root treated), 115 (leaf control, leaf treated) and 194 (root control, root treated) were differentially expressed. Two lncRNAs were found as potential target mimics of 3 miRNAs from the miRBase database. Gene ontology study was carried out which revealed that drought responsive lncRNAs are involved in biological processes like ‘metabolic process’ and ‘cellular process’, molecular functions like ‘binding’ and ‘catalytic activities’ and cellular components like ‘cell’, ‘cell part’ and ‘membrane part’. LncRNA-miRNAmRNA network play a vital role in stress responsive mechanisms through their activities in hormone signal transduction, response to stress, response to auxin and transcription factor activity. Only four lncRNAs were found to get a match with the lncRNAs present in plant lncRNA database CANTATAdb, which shows its poor conserved nature among species. All these information have been catalogued in pearl millet drought responsive long non-coding RNA database (PMDlncRDB) accessible freely at https://webtom.cabgrid.res.in/pmdlncrdb. The information from PMDlncRDB can be used for pearl millet improvement program in endeavour of higher production, combating drought in pearl millet.