DroughtDB: an expert-curated compilation of plant drought stress genes and their homologs in nine species

Abstract

Plants are sessile and therefore exposed to a number of biotic and abiotic stresses. Drought is the major abiotic stress restricting plant growth worldwide. A number of genes involved in drought stress response have already been characterized, mainly in the model species Arabidopsis thaliana and Oryza sativa. However, with the aim to produce drought tolerant crop varieties, it is of importance to identify the respective orthologs for each species. We have developed DroughtDB, a manually curated compilation of molecularly characterized genes that are involved in drought stress response. DroughtDB includes information about the originally identified gene, its physiological and/or molecular function and mutant phenotypes and provides detailed information about computed orthologous genes in nine model and crop plant species including maize and barley. All identified orthologs are interlinked with the respective reference entry in MIPS/PGSB PlantsDB, which allows retrieval of additional information like genome context and sequence information. Thus, DroughtDB is a valuable resource and information tool for researchers working on drought stress and will facilitate the identification, analysis and characterization of genes involved in drought stress tolerance in agriculturally important crop plants. Database URL: http://pgsb.helmholtz-muenchen.de/droughtdb/

Figure 1.

Schematic overview of the three layers of DroughtDB. Layer 1 consists of the two blocks molecular adaptation (orange) and physiological adaptation (blue). Layer 2 (dark yellow) shows a more detailed categorization of the pathways of molecular adaptation (e.g. Gene Expression is grouped into transcription factors, miRNA, Histone Modification and Chromatin). Layer 3 (light yellow) represents specific gene families involved in drought stress response (e.g. transcription factors encoded by the DREB, bZIP, MYC, MYB, NAC, AP2-domain, NF-Y, ERF, WRKY and zinc finger gene family).

Figure 2.

Screenshot of the DroughtDB web interface. (A) When hovering above a node in the Pathway Browser corresponding genes are highlighted in the Gene Table. (B) Hovering above a gene highlights all related nodes. (C) When selecting a gene from the table further details are shown.