The potential of bioinformatics approaches in identifying genetic factors associated with environmental stress reponse of cereal crops.

Wheat is Australia's largest cereal crop but its growth can suffer from environmental stress factors such as drought, salinity, chilling, frost and flooding. Biotechnology is starting to play significant roles in identifying genes associated with abiotic stress tolerance. This work focuses on one such gene family, the aqlaporins. Rice (Oryza sativa) has had its entire genome sequenced, hence we have used various in silica approaches such as keyword searches, sequence homology based searches and sequence alignments to compile a comprehensive list of rice aquaporins, including gene size, chromosomal location, gene type and predicted functional roles. Comparative genomics is a particularly fast growing area of research and is an important tool for utilising existing genetic data for application to other species. Information on synteny (conserved order of genes and other DNA sections between species) between the comparatively simple genome of rice and the complex genome of wheat (Triticum aestivum) is also being utilised to identify sections of wheat chromosomes which contain aquaporins with potentially significant roles in environmental stress resistance. These approaches will circumvent much laboratory work, resulting in a quicker identification of aquaporin genes of interest for future studies. Similar methods could also be extended to other environmental stress responsive genes.