The Importance of Transcriptomics in Plant Stress Response Studies

Abstract

Unfavorable environmental conditions, such as biotic and abiotic stresses, pose a significant threat to crop yield worldwide. Through transcriptomics and next-generation sequencing, high-throughput large-scale data involving known and novel genes (both regulatory and non-regulatory) have been generated. Recent advances in molecular biology have provided an unprecedented level of detailed identification of the cellular genome and the transcriptome: the entire set of RNA transcribed by a cell or tissue. Understanding transcriptomics at the single-cell and tissue-specific levels is highly necessary to unravel the coordinated aspects of the spatially regulatory gene network in response to biotic and abiotic stress conditions. This chapter provides a comprehensive perspective on transcriptomics by discussing its strategies, advances, significance, recent accomplishments, and future goals. In addition, the technical pros and cons of single-cell sequencing have been also discussed. Finally, the extended applications of these technologies focusing on comparative transcriptomics (regulatory and non-regulatory) under biotic and abiotic conditions in model and crop plants have been discussed in this chapter. © 2023 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.