Ngara Rudo, Goche Tatenda, Swanevelder Dirk Z H, Chivasa Stephen
Department of Plant Sciences, University of the Free State, Qwaqwa Campus, Phuthadithjaba 9866, South Africa.
Department of Crop Sciences, Gwanda State University, Epoch Mine Campus, Filabusi, Zimbabwe.
Life (Basel). 2021 Jul 17;11(7):704. doi: 10.3390/life11070704.
Sorghum is a cereal crop with key agronomic traits of drought and heat stress tolerance, making it an ideal food and industrial commodity for hotter and more arid climates. These stress tolerances also present a useful scientific resource for studying the molecular basis for environmental resilience. Here we provide an extensive review of current transcriptome and proteome works conducted with laboratory, greenhouse, or field-grown sorghum plants exposed to drought, osmotic stress, or treated with the drought stress-regulatory phytohormone, abscisic acid. Large datasets from these studies reveal changes in gene/protein expression across diverse signaling and metabolic pathways. Together, the emerging patterns from these datasets reveal that the overall functional classes of stress-responsive genes/proteins within sorghum are similar to those observed in equivalent studies of other drought-sensitive model species. This highlights a monumental challenge of distinguishing key regulatory genes/proteins, with a primary role in sorghum adaptation to drought, from genes/proteins that change in expression because of stress. Finally, we discuss possible options for taking the research forward. Successful exploitation of sorghum research for implementation in other crops may be critical in establishing climate-resilient agriculture for future food security.
高粱是一种谷类作物，具有耐旱和耐热胁迫的关键农艺性状，使其成为更炎热和干旱气候下理想的粮食和工业原料。这些胁迫耐受性也为研究环境适应能力的分子基础提供了有用的科学资源。在此，我们对目前针对实验室、温室或田间种植的高粱植株进行的转录组和蛋白质组研究进行了全面综述，这些高粱植株分别遭受干旱、渗透胁迫或用干旱胁迫调节植物激素脱落酸处理。这些研究的大量数据集揭示了不同信号和代谢途径中基因/蛋白质表达的变化。这些数据集呈现出的新趋势共同表明，高粱中胁迫响应基因/蛋白质的总体功能类别与在其他干旱敏感模式物种的等效研究中观察到的相似。这凸显了一个巨大的挑战，即如何区分在高粱适应干旱中起主要作用的关键调控基因/蛋白质与因胁迫而表达发生变化的基因/蛋白质。最后，我们讨论了推动该研究向前发展的可能选择。成功利用高粱研究成果应用于其他作物，对于建立适应气候变化的农业以保障未来粮食安全可能至关重要。
