Gene expression responses to sequential nutrient deficiency stresses in soybean

Throughout a growing season, plants experience a multitude of short periods of various abiotic stresses. These stress events have long-term impacts on plant performance and yield. It is imperative to improve our understanding of the genes and networks underlying plant stress tolerance to mitigate end of season yield loss. The majority of studies examining transcriptional changes induced by stress focus on single stress events. Few studies have been performed to examine the transcriptional response of plants exposed to sequential stress exposure, which better reflects field conditions. In this study, we examine the transcriptional profile of soybean plants exposed to iron deficiency stress followed by phosphate deficiency stress (-Fe-Pi). Comparing this response to previous studies, we identified a suite of genes unique to the novel sequential stress exposure (-Fe-Pi)