A correlation of seedling height and chromosomal damage in irradiated barley seeds

Cd2+ + Cr6+ causes toxic effects on chromosomal development of microspore in Carthamus tinctorius

Intra-category hybrids of Carthamus tinctorius were analyzed for the genetic toxicity in detail for effect of Cd²⁺ + Cr⁶⁺ on reproductive biology of Carthamus tinctorius. Five partially tolerant and five non-tolerant accessions of Carthamus tinctorius after screening were crossed to produce intra-category hybrid. These two heavy metals in combination influenced antagonistically first as well as second meiotic divisions inducing various kinds of anomalies and reduced the number of pollen grains per anther and significantly increased pollen sterility. A differential response for the amount of meiotic irregularity was recorded between different treated sets of hybrids in (Cd + Cr) treated sets. This could be due to differential response of the genotypes for the same concentration of (Cd + Cr). These two heavy metals in combination reduced the number of pollen grains per anther and significantly increased pollen sterility.

Transcriptome profiles of tomato plants after neutron irradiation and infection with TYLCV

Ionizing radiation is ubiquitous in the environment and can cause mutagenesis in living organisms. In this study, we examined the effects of neutron irradiation on tomato plants. Neutron irradiation decreased tomato germination rates, but most irradiated tomato plants did not show any significant phenotype. However, tomato mutants infected by Tomato yellow leaf curl virus (TYLCV) displayed resistance against TYLCV compared to the wild type (WT), which showed disease symptoms. RNA-Seq data demonstrated that the expression profiles of eight tomato mutants were significantly different from that of the WT. The transcriptomes obtained from presoaked seeds were highly altered compared to those of dry seeds. Increased irradiation time resulted in severe changes in the tomato transcriptome; however, different neutron irradiation intensities affected the expressions of different sets of genes. A high number of single-nucleotide polymorphisms in tomato transcriptomes suggest that neutron irradiation strongly impacts plant transcriptomes. The transition/transversion values among mutants were almost constant and were lower than that of the non-irradiated sample (WT), suggesting that neutron irradiation caused an effect. Taken together, this is the first report showing the effects of neutron irradiation on tomato plants by transcriptome analyses.