Zhu Chunhui, Zhao Ling, Zhao Shaoxing, Niu Xingfang, Li Lin, Gao Hui, Liu Jiaxin, Wang Litao, Zhang Ting, Cheng Ruhong, Shi Zhigang, Zhang Haoshan, Wang Genping
College of Physics, Hebei Normal University, Shijiazhuang 050024, China.
Institute of Millet Crops, Key Laboratory of Genetic Improvement and Utilization for Featured Coarse Cereals (Co-construction by Ministry and Province), Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Afairs, National Foxtail Millet Improvement Center, Key Laboratory of Minor Cereal Crops of Hebei Province, Hebei Academy of Agriculture and Forestry Sciences, Shijiazhuang 050035, China.
Int J Biol Macromol. 2024 Oct;277(Pt 2):134288. doi: 10.1016/j.ijbiomac.2024.134288. Epub 2024 Jul 29.
Drought stress is a major constraint on crop development, potentially causing huge yield losses and threatening global food security. Improving Crop's stress tolerance is usually associated with a yield penalty. One way to balance yield and stress tolerance is modification specific gene by emerging precision genome editing technology. However, our knowledge of yield-related drought-tolerant genes is still limited. Foxtail millet (Setaria italica) has a remarkable tolerance to drought and is considered to be a model C4 crop that is easy to engineer. Here, we have identified 46 drought-responsive candidate genes by performing a machine learning-based transcriptome study on two drought-tolerant and two drought-sensitive foxtail millet cultivars. A total of 12 important drought-responsive genes were screened out by principal component analysis and confirmed experimentally by qPCR. Significantly, by investigating the haplotype of these genes based on 1844 germplasm resources, we found two genes (Seita.5G251300 and Seita.8G036300) exhibiting drought-tolerant haplotypes that possess an apparent advantage in 1000 grain weight and main panicle grain weight without penalty in grain weight per plant. These results demonstrate the potential of Seita.5G251300 and Seita.8G036300 for breeding drought-tolerant high-yielding foxtail millet. It provides important insights for the breeding of drought-tolerant high-yielding crop cultivars through genetic manipulation technology.
干旱胁迫是作物生长发育的主要限制因素，可能导致巨大的产量损失并威胁全球粮食安全。提高作物的胁迫耐受性通常会伴随着产量损失。平衡产量和胁迫耐受性的一种方法是通过新兴的精准基因组编辑技术对特定基因进行修饰。然而，我们对与产量相关的耐旱基因的了解仍然有限。谷子（Setaria italica）对干旱具有显著的耐受性，被认为是一种易于进行基因工程改造的C4模式作物。在这里，我们通过对两个耐旱和两个干旱敏感的谷子品种进行基于机器学习的转录组研究，鉴定出了46个干旱响应候选基因。通过主成分分析筛选出总共12个重要的干旱响应基因，并通过qPCR进行了实验验证。值得注意的是，通过基于1844份种质资源研究这些基因的单倍型，我们发现两个基因（Seita.5G251300和Seita.8G036300）呈现出耐旱单倍型，在千粒重和主穗粒重方面具有明显优势，且单株粒重没有损失。这些结果证明了Seita.5G251300和Seita.8G036300在培育耐旱高产谷子方面的潜力。它为通过基因操作技术培育耐旱高产作物品种提供了重要见解。
