Elucidating the roles of small open reading frames towards drought stress in Solanum lycopersicum
Wei Quan Ng, Nur Ardiyana Rejab, Sima Taheri and Chee How Teo
Abstract: Solanum lycopersicum is highly susceptible to drought, which negatively impacts its production. While traditional genetic improvement focuses on coding genes, small open reading frames (sORFs) offer a new approach. This study aimed to identify and characterise drought-responsive sORFs in MT1 tomato plants exposed to 20 days of drought stress. Using the sORF finder pipeline, 676,611 coding sORFs were identified in the intergenic regions of the S. lycopersicum genome. Detailed analysis revealed 776 coding sORFs with translation potential, including 86 sORFs that shared homology to upstream sORFs. Drought transcriptome analysis revealed 862 differentially expressed genes, including 78 intergenic and 166 annotated sORFs. Gene ontology analysis highlighted the involvement of sORFs in “response to external stimulus” and “response to biotic stimulus” terms while KEGG pathway analysis revealed their involvement in “steroid biosynthesis” and “plant hormone signal transduction” pathways. This study provides insights into the role of sORFs in tomato drought responses.