Barratt Liam J, Reynolds Isaac J, Franco Ortega Sara, Harper Andrea L
Centre for Novel Agricultural Products (CNAP), Department of Biology, University of York, York, United Kingdom.
Front Plant Sci. 2023 Jun 23;14:1212559. doi: 10.3389/fpls.2023.1212559. eCollection 2023.
Over four billion people around the world rely on bread wheat ( L.) as a major constituent of their diet. The changing climate, however, threatens the food security of these people, with periods of intense drought stress already causing widespread wheat yield losses. Much of the research into the wheat drought response has centred on the response to drought events later in development, during anthesis or grain filling. But as the timing of periods of drought stress become increasingly unpredictable, a more complete understanding of the response to drought during early development is also needed.
Here, we utilized the YoGI landrace panel to identify 10,199 genes which were differentially expressed under early drought stress, before weighted gene co-expression network analysis (WGCNA) was used to construct a co-expression network and identify hub genes in modules particularly associated with the early drought response.
Of these hub genes, two stood out as novel candidate master regulators of the early drought response - one as an activator (; ) and the other as a repressor (uncharacterised gene; ).
As well as appearing to coordinate the transcriptional early drought response, we propose that these hub genes may be able to regulate the physiological early drought response due to potential control over the expression of members of gene families well-known for their involvement in the drought response in many plant species, namely dehydrins and aquaporins, as well as other genes seemingly involved in key processes such as, stomatal opening, stomatal closing, stomatal morphogenesis and stress hormone signalling.
全球超过40亿人将面包小麦（Triticum aestivum L.）作为其饮食的主要组成部分。然而，气候变化威胁着这些人的粮食安全，严重的干旱胁迫时期已经导致小麦产量普遍损失。对小麦干旱反应的许多研究都集中在发育后期、开花期或灌浆期对干旱事件的反应上。但是，随着干旱胁迫时期的时间变得越来越不可预测，也需要更全面地了解早期发育过程中对干旱的反应。
在这里，我们利用YoGI地方品种面板鉴定了10199个在早期干旱胁迫下差异表达的基因，然后使用加权基因共表达网络分析（WGCNA）构建共表达网络，并在与早期干旱反应特别相关的模块中鉴定枢纽基因。
在这些枢纽基因中，有两个脱颖而出，成为早期干旱反应的新型候选主调控因子——一个作为激活因子（基因；），另一个作为抑制因子（未表征基因；）。
除了似乎协调转录早期干旱反应外，我们还提出，这些枢纽基因可能能够调节生理早期干旱反应，因为它们可能控制许多植物物种中众所周知参与干旱反应的基因家族成员的表达，即脱水素和水通道蛋白，以及其他似乎参与气孔开放、气孔关闭、气孔形态发生和应激激素信号传导等关键过程的基因。
