Meta analysis of RNA-Seq data for sugar beet (Beta vulgaris L.) under certain biotic and abiotic stresses

Sugar beet (Beta vulgaris) meets the 30% of world sugar production. Soil pollution, biotic and abiotic factors in production areas greatly reduce product quantity and quality. Such stress conditions are drought, salt, heat, light, nematod bacteria and fungi infections. Sugar beet differently responds to biotic and abiotic stresses. Understanding Beta vulgaris response to stress at the molecular level can help both in increasing the yield and quality in crop. Transcriptome studies performed under stress conditions can shed light on the responses of plants at the molecular level. In this study four different stress condition data has been used. Two of them are biotic stresses (nematode and fungi infection), two of them are abiotic stresses (ABA treatment and salt stress). Meta-analysis can help to find common responses under different stress conditions. In this study, we performed meta-analysis of studies conducted under biotic and abiotic stress conditions and revealed ten genes that differentially expressed under both biotic and abiotic stress conditions. Biotic stresses have 460 common genes and abiotic stresses have 1031 stress related genes. Downregulation of phenophytinase and upregulation of mannitol dehydrogenase may indicate the increasing photosynthesis rate. Nevertheless, further studies are necessary for identification of genes and understand the whole mechanism of B. vulgaris stress response.