Analysis of bHLH coding genes of Cicer arietinum during heavy metal stress using biological network.

bHLH family of transcription factors play important role in regulating many cellular and physiological functions in plants. These proteins are also known to be involved in response to several abiotic stress types. Cicer arietinum is an important source of protein in food across the globe. Considerable differential expression in the bHLH family of proteins during heavy metal exposure in Cicer arietinum was observed by microarray data analysis. The study aimed to construct a Pearson coefficient correlation based network of bHLH coding genes in the plant. Microarray data of Cicer arietinum recorded under cadmium and chromium stress (GSE86807) from GEO at NCBI was used for analysis. The network constructed from expression data set of the 85 bHLH coding genes revealed 10 hub genes that are connected with topological genes. These hub genes are stress responsive genes that may also be regarded as the marker genes for heavy metal response. Our analysis reported a new set of reference genes (hub genes) that have potentially significant role in development of stress tolerant crops.