High salinity and drought are the major abiotic stresses that adversely affect plant growth and agricultural pro-ductivity. To investigate genes that are involved in response to abiotic stresses in Brassica napus, a compre-hensive survey of genes induced by high-salinity and drought stresses was done by macroarray analysis. In total, 536 clones were identified to be putative high-sal-inity- or drought-responsive genes. Among them, 172 and 288 clones are detected to be putative high-salinity- and drought-inducible genes, whereas 141 and 189 are candi-dates for high-salinity- and drought-suppressed genes, respectively. The functional classification of these genes are indicated that belonged to gene families encoding metabolic enzymes, regulatory factors, components of signal transduction, hormone responses, some abiotic stresses-related proteins, and other processes related to growth and development of B. napus. From the up-regulated candidate genes, some interested genes were further demonstrated to be high-salinity- or/and drought-induced expression by real-time quantitative RT-PCR analysis. The experimental results also revealed that some genes may function in abscisic acid-dependent signaling pathway related to drought or salinity stress. Collectively,the data presented in this study will facilitate the under-standing of molecular mechanism of B. napus in response to high-salinity and drought stresses, and also provide us the basis of effective genetic engineering strategies for improving stress tolerance of B. napus.
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