1. Patterns of pan‐genome occupancy and gene coexpression under water‐deficit in Brachypodium distachyon
- Author
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Rubén Sancho, Pilar Catalán, Bruno Contreras‐Moreira, Thomas E. Juenger, David L. Des Marais, Department of Agriculture (US), Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (España), Universidad de Zaragoza, Joint Genome Institute (US), Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (España), Ibercaja, Instituto de Estudios Altoaragoneses, ARAID Foundation, and Contreras-Moreira, Bruno
- Subjects
transcriptomics ,Protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss ,genomics/proteomics ,molecular evolution ,Genetics ,Water ,Genes, Plant ,Transcriptome ,phenotypic plasticity ,Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics ,Brachypodium ,Droughts - Abstract
22 Pags.- 3 Figs.- 4 Tabls. © 2022 The Authors. Molecular Ecology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License., Natural populations are characterized by abundant genetic diversity driven by a range of different types of mutation. The tractability of sequencing complete genomes has allowed new insights into the variable composition of genomes, summarized as a species pan-genome. These analyses demonstrate that many genes are absent from the first reference genomes, whose analysis dominated the initial years of the genomic era. Our field now turns towards understanding the functional consequence of these highly variable genomes. Here, we analysed weighted gene coexpression networks from leaf transcriptome data for drought response in the purple false brome Brachypodium distachyon and the differential expression of genes putatively involved in adaptation to this stressor. We specifically asked whether genes with variable “occupancy” in the pan-genome – genes which are either present in all studied genotypes or missing in some genotypes – show different distributions among coexpression modules. Coexpression analysis united genes expressed in drought-stressed plants into nine modules covering 72 hub genes (87 hub isoforms), and genes expressed under controlled water conditions into 13 modules, covering 190 hub genes (251 hub isoforms). We find that low occupancy pan-genes are under-represented among several modules, while other modules are over-enriched for low-occupancy pan-genes. We also provide new insight into the regulation of drought response in B. distachyon, specifically identifying one module with an apparent role in primary metabolism that is strongly responsive to drought. Our work shows the power of integrating pan-genomic analysis with transcriptomic data using factorial experiments to understand the functional genomics of environmental response., This work was supported by the USDA (NIFA-2011-67012-30663) to D.L.D., NSF (IOS-0922457) to T.E.J., the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation CGL2016-79790-P and PID2019-108195GB-I00, University of Zaragoza UZ2016_TEC02 grant projects to P.C., and the Joint Genome Institute FP00006675 contract to P.C. and FP00006746 to D.L.D. R.S. was funded by a Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (Mineco) FPI PhD fellowship, Mineco and Ibercaja-CAI mobility grants and Instituto de Estudios Altoaragoneses grant. B.C.M. was funded by Fundación ARAID. P.C. and R.S. were partially funded by a European Social Fund/Spanish Aragón Government Bioflora grant.
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- 2022