Bayesian modeling of plant drought resistance pathway

Background Plants are sessile organisms and are unable to relocate to favorable locations under extreme environmental conditions. Hence they have no choice but to acclimate and eventually adapt to the severe conditions to ensure their survival. As traditional methods of bolstering plant defense against stressful conditions come to their biological limit, we require newer methods that can allow us to strengthen plants’ internal defense mechanism. These factors motivated us to look into the genetic networks of plants. The WRKY transcription factors are well known for their role in plant defense against biotic stresses, but recent studies have shed light on their activities against abiotic stresses such as drought. We modeled this network of WRKY transcription factors using Bayesian networks and applied inference algorithm to find the best regulators of drought response. Biologically intervening (activating/inhibiting) these regulators can bolster the defense response of plants against droughts.