Transcriptome response to safener treatment in rice cell cultures

Safeners are an important group of agrochemicals that can extend the selective use of existing herbicides into a wider range of cereals by protecting the crops from chemical injury. The recently released aromatic sulphonamide safeners cyprosulfamide and metcamifen were tested for their ability to protect rice plants from the phytotoxicity caused by clodinafop-propargyl, a herbicide normally only used in wheat. Transcriptome studies in rice cultures demonstrated that whereas cyprosulfamide had a negligible effect on gene expression over a 4 h exposure, metcamifen perturbed the abundance of 590 transcripts. Analysis of the inducible genes suggested that safening elicited similar gene families to those associated with specific biotic and abiotic stresses, notably those elicited by abscisic acid, salicylic acid and methyl-jasmonate. Overall design: Changes in the transcriptome of rice cultures exposed to metcamifen (5 µM) or cyprosulfamide (5 µM) were determined as compared with control cells treated with the carrier solvent DMSO. Cultures were sampled at 0.5 h, 1.5 h and 4 h after dosing and subjected to RNA-seq analysis. Three biological replicates were sequenced for each sample for a total of 27 samples

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