Whole-Transcriptome Responses to Environmental Stresses in Agricultural Crops Treated with Carbon-Based Nanomaterials

Carbon-based nanomaterials (CBNs) such as carbon nanotubes (CNTs) and graphene can be beneficial to crops exposed to abiotic stresses such as drought and high salinity. Our findings suggest that the improvement observed in stressed crops treated with CBNs can be associated with CBN-induced restoration of gene expression. When subjected to salt stress, sorghum seedlings showed modified expression in 51 stress-related genes. The introduction of CNTs or graphene into the salty growth medium resulted in the restoration of the expression of 29 affected genes, resembling that of untreated sorghum seedlings. RNA-Seq approach allowed us to analyze the total gene expression of CBN-treated rice exposed to water-deficit stress and gene expression of CBN-treated tomato plants exposed to salt stress. The application of CNTs or graphene resulted in full or partial restoration of expression of 458 and 1620 genes, respectively, affected by water-deficit stress in rice. Similarly, CBN treatment of NaCl-exposed tomato seedlings led to full or partial restoration of 1639 and 1391 salt-affected transcripts, respectively. Of the genes with restored expression, many of them were identified as major stress-response genes and major transcriptional factors (aquaporins, dehydrins, and heat shock proteins/co-chaperons, NAC, WRKY) and were associated with key stress-signaling pathways (ABA-signaling, InsP₃ signaling, and MAPK signaling) in all three tested plant species. These findings provide evidence that CBNs can provide halotolerance and drought tolerance by normalizing the expression of affected stress genes.