Expression profile, transcriptional and post-transcriptional regulation of genes involved in hydrogen sulphide metabolism connecting the balance between development and stress adaptation in plants: a data-mining bioinformatics approach.

Recent research focused on novel aspects of sulphur and sulphur-containing molecules in fundamental plant processes has highlighted the importance of these compounds. Currently, the focus has shifted to the efficacy of hydrogen sulphide (H 2 S) as signalling compounds that regulate different development and stress mitigation in plants. Accordingly, we used an in silico approach to study the differential expression patterns of H 2 S metabolic genes at different growth/development stages and their tissue-specific expression patterns under a range of abiotic stresses. Moreover, to understand the multilevel regulation of genes involved in H 2 S metabolism, we performed computation-based promoter analysis, alternative splice variant analysis, prediction of putative miRNA targets and co-expression network analysis. Gene expression analysis suggests that H 2 S biosynthesis is highly influenced by developmental and stress stimuli. The functional annotation of promoter structures reveales a wide range of plant hormone and stress responsive cis-regulatory elements (CREs) that regulate H 2 S metabolism. Co-expression analysis suggested that genes involved in H 2 S metabolism are also associated with different metabolic processes. In this data-mining study, the primary focus was to understand the genetic architecture governing pathways of H 2 S metabolism in different cell compartments under various developmental and stress signalling cascades. The present study will help to understand the genetic architecture of H 2 S metabolism via cysteine metabolism and the functional roles of these genes in development and stress tolerance mechanisms.