# Proteomic analysis of proteins responsive to drought stress in barley

## TL;DR

This study identifies proteins in barley seedlings that respond to drought stress, offering insights for developing drought-tolerant barley varieties.

## Contribution

This is the first proteomic analysis of Giza132 barley seedlings under drought stress, identifying novel candidate proteins for drought tolerance.

## Key findings

- 56 protein spots were identified, with 6 unique in control and 8 unique in drought-stressed gels.
- Proteins like L-ascorbate peroxidase and Alcohol dehydrogenase I are linked to drought tolerance.
- Some proteins are up-regulated while others are down-regulated under drought stress.

## Abstract

Drought stress is one of the main environmental factors limiting the development, growth, and crop yield of barley plants. Finding drought-tolerant genes and the proteins they encode that are linked to the interplay between drought tolerance and growth/yield is crucial for enhancing genotypes’ ability to withstand drought and other abiotic stressors. Our study’s objective was to leverage prior proteomic research to identify candidate genes and the proteins they encode that are important in barley’s responses to drought tolerance and to examine how drought stress alters their expression.

In this study we used two-dimensional electrophoresis (2D-gel), mass spectrometry and bioinformatics software to investigate Giza132 barley seedling proteins’ composition and function under drought stress in comparison with control. Our results showed about 56 spots (proteins) from various unique and common proteins, which are related with the ability of barley plants to tolerance. the drought stress. And these proteins have various biological functions and play an important role in drought and other abiotic stress tolerance such as; spot 32 (HORVU4Hr1G089510), spot 47 (HORVU4Hr1G057210) and spot 51 (HORVU4Hr1G016810) which related with L-ascorbate peroxidase enzyme, Alcohol dehydrogenase I enzyme and Fructose-bisphosphate aldolase enzyme, respectively. Moreover, from our results we found the control gel have six unique spots (spots sequence numbers; e.g., 25, 26, 27, 42, 46 and 50), while eight unique spots were detected in the drought stress gel (spots sequence numbers; e.g., 1, 17, 24, 34, 44, 47, 52 and 56). And the remaining 42 spots are common between both gels. And some of these previous proteins are up-regulated and the others are down-regulated expressions under the effect of drought stress. In addition, our data analysis showed that these previous proteins showed various biological functions and some of these functions were related with the ability of drought tolerance in plants. Furthermore, the putative expression patterns of the identified proteins by BAR databases as bioinformatics tools were also completed.

To our knowledge, this is the first proteomic analysis for evaluating the effect of drought stress on the levels of expression of different proteins in Giza132 barley seedling. At the end, this information can be relied upon in future programs related to the production of new barley genotypes that are tolerant to drought and other biotic stresses.

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12870-026-08176-8.