scholarly journals Genome-wide sequence and expression analysis of the NAC transcription factor family in polyploid wheat

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philippa Borrill ◽  
Sophie A. Harrington ◽  
Cristobal Uauy

ARTICLE SUMMARYTranscription factors are vital in plants to regulate gene expression in response to environmental stimuli and to control developmental processes. In this study, we annotated and classified transcription factors in polyploid bread wheat into gene families and explored the NAC family in detail. We combined phylogenetic analysis and transcriptome analysis, using publicly available RNA-seq data, to characterize the NAC gene family and provide hypotheses for putative functions of many NAC transcription factors. This study lays the groundwork for future studies on transcription factors in wheat which may be of great agronomic relevance.ABSTRACTMany important genes in agriculture correspond to transcription factors which regulate a wide range of pathways from flowering to responses to disease and abiotic stresses. In this study, we identified 5,776 transcription factors in hexaploid wheat (Triticum aestivum) and classified them into gene families. We further investigated the NAC family exploring the phylogeny, C-terminal domain conservation and expression profiles across 308 RNA-seq samples. Phylogenetic trees of NAC domains indicated that wheat NACs divided into eight groups similar to rice (Oryza sativa) and barley (Hordeum vulgare). C-terminal domain motifs were frequently conserved between wheat, rice and barley within phylogenetic groups, however this conservation was not maintained across phylogenetic groups. We explored gene expression patterns across a wide range of developmental stages, tissues, and abiotic stresses. We found that more phylogenetically related NACs shared more similar expression patterns compared to more distant NACs. However, within each phylogenetic group there were clades with diverse expression profiles. We carried out a co-expression analysis on all wheat genes and identified 37 modules of co-expressed genes of which 23 contained NACs. Using GO term enrichment we obtained putative functions for NACs within co-expressed modules including responses to heat and abiotic stress and responses to water: these NACs may represent targets for breeding or biotechnological applications. This study provides a framework and data for hypothesis generation for future studies on NAC transcription factors in wheat.

PeerJ ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
pp. e8249
Author(s):  
Huifeng Li ◽  
Kun Ran ◽  
Qinglong Dong ◽  
Qiang Zhao ◽  
Song Shi

Background NAC transcription factors play important roles in the regulation of plant growth, development, abiotic and biotic stress responses. The transcriptional level of MdNACs in different tissues and under various biotic and abiotic stress treatments was determined to provide a solid foundation for studying the function of MdNACs. Methods Thirty-two full-length cDNA sequences of Md NACs were isolated by homologous comparison and RT-PCR confirmation, and the obtained cDNA sequences and the deduced amino acid sequences were analyzed with bioinformatics methods. The prediction of subcellular locations of MdNAC proteins was performed using CELLO v.2.5, PSORT, and SoftBerry ProtComp 9.0. Expression levels of MdNACs were detected in 16 different tissues using an array. Expression patterns of MdNACs were detected in response to Alternaria alternata apple pathotype (AAAP) infection using RNA-seq, and the expression of MdNACs was analyzed under NaCl and mannitol treatments using RT-qPCR. Results The sequencing results produced 32 cDNAs (designated as MdNAC24-39, MdNAC54-65, and MdNAC67-70 with GenBank accession No. MG099861–MG099876, MG099891–MG099902, and MG099904–MG099907, respectively). Phylogenetic analysis revealed that MdNAC34 belonged to the ATAF group, MdNAC63 belonged to the AtNAC3 group, MdNAC24, MdNAC26-30, MdNAC32-33, MdNAC35, MdNAC37-39, MdNAC56-57, MdNAC59-62, MdNAC64-65, and MdNAC67-70 belonged to the NAM group, and MdNAC25, MdNAC36, MdNAC54-55, and MdNAC58 belonged to the VND group. Predictions of subcellular localization showed that MdNAC24-27, MdNAC29-30, MdNAC33-37, MdNAC39, MdNAC54-65, and MdNAC67-70 proteins were located in the nucleus, MdNAC28 proteins were located in the cytoplasm, MdNAC31-32 proteins were located in the nucleus and cytoplasm, and MdNAC38 proteins were located in the nucleus and plasma membrane. Array results indicated that 32 MdNACs were expressed in all examined tissues at various expression levels. RNA-seq results showed that expression levels of MdNAC26-28, MdNAC33-34, MdNAC60, MdNAC62-65, and MdNAC68 were induced, but MdNAC24, MdNAC32, and MdNAC58 were down-regulated in response to AAAP infection. Under salt treatment, MdNAC24, MdNAC27, MdNAC29, MdNAC34, MdNAC37, MdNAC39, MdNAC54, MdNAC59, and MdNAC63 transcription levels were induced. Under mannitol treatment, MdNAC32 and MdNAC54 transcription levels were induced, but MdNAC24, MdNAC28, MdNAC30, MdNAC33, MdNAC35, MdNAC37, MdNAC55, MdNAC56, MdNAC58, and MdNAC59 were down-regulated. Taken together, the results indicated that the cloned MdNAC genes were expressed constitutively in all examined tissues. These genes were up-regulated or down-regulated in response to AAAP infection and to salt or mannitol, which suggested they may be involved in the regulation of growth, development, and stress response in apple.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Boas Pucker ◽  
Anna Schwandner ◽  
Sarah Becker ◽  
Ludger Hausmann ◽  
Prisca Viehöver ◽  
...  

AbstractPlants display sophisticated mechanisms to tolerate challenging environmental conditions and need to manage their ontogenesis in parallel. Here, we set out to generate an RNA-Seq time series dataset throughout grapevine (Vitis vinifera) early bud development. The expression of the developmental regulator VviAP1 served as an indicator for progress of development. We investigated the impact of changing temperatures on gene expression levels during the time series and detected a correlation between increased temperatures and a high expression level of genes encoding heat-shock proteins. The data set also allowed the exemplary investigation of expression patterns of genes from three transcription factor (TF) gene families, namely MADS-box, WRKY, and R2R3-MYB genes. Inspection of the expression profiles from all three TF gene families indicated that a switch in the developmental program takes place in July which coincides with increased expression of the bud dormancy marker gene VviDRM1.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. Naveen Prasanth ◽  
Viswanathan Rasappa ◽  
P. Malathi ◽  
A.R. Sundar

Abstract Background - Sugarcane (Saccharum spp hybrid), an important C4 perennial plantation crop, globally grown for white sugar and ethanol production. Red rot caused by Colletotrichum falcatum is one of the most important threats affecting sugarcane productivity in many countries including India.Materials and Methods - Comprehensive understanding is very much needed to define their transcription level differences and their key regulatory genes during interaction of sugarcane with C. falcatum. To compute and evaluate the molecular mechanism in sugarcane, transcriptome analysis of sugarcane challenged with C. falcatum was sequenced using Hi-Seq 2500 and gene expression profiles were generated by qRT-PCR assays in both compatible and incompatible interactions after challenge inoculation of C. falcatum in sugarcane.Results - A total of 15,728,914 reads were aligned to 48,935 unigenes using BOWTIE 2; the unigenes were annotated using BLASTX and found that 39,895 unigenes were annotated and 22,025 were unigenes with respect to host species, 8,830 with respect to Colletotrichum spp and 9,040 were found to be novel genes. A total of 243 transcription factors (TFs) were found to be predicted in sugarcane challenged with C. falcatum and those TFs were divided into 45 specific families. WRKY, MYB, NAC, bHLH and AUX/IAA transcription factors were found to be abundant which are considered to be key regulators in controlling wide range of molecular events such as defense response, oxidative stimuli, host signalling and triggering disease resistance. In addition, a lot of stress related genes and genes involved in gene ontological and KEGG pathway were significantly affected due to C. falcatum infection. Quantative real time PCR assays carried out to validate reliability of observed expression patterns in sugarcane in response to C. falcatum infection illustrates first transcriptome wide in planta identification and analysis of TF repertoire in the host pathogen interaction.Conclusion - The results of this study provide a benchmark discovery in finding host targets and provide tissue specific data set of genes that express in response to C. falcatum in sugarcane and also a complete analysis of main group of genes that significantly enriched under this condition. This is the first comprehensive work provides basis for the further studies to dissect role of TFs at molecular level in sugarcane defense to fungal pathogens.


Plants ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (11) ◽  
pp. 1548
Author(s):  
Boas Pucker ◽  
Anna Schwandner ◽  
Sarah Becker ◽  
Ludger Hausmann ◽  
Prisca Viehöver ◽  
...  

Plants display sophisticated mechanisms to tolerate challenging environmental conditions and need to manage their ontogenesis in parallel. Here, we set out to generate an RNA-Seq time series dataset throughout grapevine (Vitis vinifera) early bud development. The expression of the developmental regulator VviAP1 served as an indicator of the progression of development. We investigated the impact of changing temperatures on gene expression levels during the time series and detected a correlation between increased temperatures and a high expression level of genes encoding heat-shock proteins. The dataset also allowed the exemplary investigation of expression patterns of genes from three transcription factor (TF) gene families, namely MADS-box, WRKY, and R2R3-MYB genes. Inspection of the expression profiles from all three TF gene families indicated that a switch in the developmental program takes place in July which coincides with increased expression of the bud dormancy marker gene VviDRM1.


Genes ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 311
Author(s):  
Zhenqiu Liu

Single-cell RNA-seq (scRNA-seq) is a powerful tool to measure the expression patterns of individual cells and discover heterogeneity and functional diversity among cell populations. Due to variability, it is challenging to analyze such data efficiently. Many clustering methods have been developed using at least one free parameter. Different choices for free parameters may lead to substantially different visualizations and clusters. Tuning free parameters is also time consuming. Thus there is need for a simple, robust, and efficient clustering method. In this paper, we propose a new regularized Gaussian graphical clustering (RGGC) method for scRNA-seq data. RGGC is based on high-order (partial) correlations and subspace learning, and is robust over a wide-range of a regularized parameter λ. Therefore, we can simply set λ=2 or λ=log(p) for AIC (Akaike information criterion) or BIC (Bayesian information criterion) without cross-validation. Cell subpopulations are discovered by the Louvain community detection algorithm that determines the number of clusters automatically. There is no free parameter to be tuned with RGGC. When evaluated with simulated and benchmark scRNA-seq data sets against widely used methods, RGGC is computationally efficient and one of the top performers. It can detect inter-sample cell heterogeneity, when applied to glioblastoma scRNA-seq data.


Plants ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (7) ◽  
pp. 1465
Author(s):  
Ramon de Koning ◽  
Raphaël Kiekens ◽  
Mary Esther Muyoka Toili ◽  
Geert Angenon

Raffinose family oligosaccharides (RFO) play an important role in plants but are also considered to be antinutritional factors. A profound understanding of the galactinol and RFO biosynthetic gene families and the expression patterns of the individual genes is a prerequisite for the sustainable reduction of the RFO content in the seeds, without compromising normal plant development and functioning. In this paper, an overview of the annotation and genetic structure of all galactinol- and RFO biosynthesis genes is given for soybean and common bean. In common bean, three galactinol synthase genes, two raffinose synthase genes and one stachyose synthase gene were identified for the first time. To discover the expression patterns of these genes in different tissues, two expression atlases have been created through re-analysis of publicly available RNA-seq data. De novo expression analysis through an RNA-seq study during seed development of three varieties of common bean gave more insight into the expression patterns of these genes during the seed development. The results of the expression analysis suggest that different classes of galactinol- and RFO synthase genes have tissue-specific expression patterns in soybean and common bean. With the obtained knowledge, important galactinol- and RFO synthase genes that specifically play a key role in the accumulation of RFOs in the seeds are identified. These candidate genes may play a pivotal role in reducing the RFO content in the seeds of important legumes which could improve the nutritional quality of these beans and would solve the discomforts associated with their consumption.


Molecules ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 15 ◽  
Author(s):  
He Su ◽  
Yang Chu ◽  
Junqi Bai ◽  
Lu Gong ◽  
Juan Huang ◽  
...  

Herb genomics and comparative genomics provide a global platform to explore the genetics and biology of herbs at the genome level. Panax ginseng C.A. Meyer is an important medicinal plant for a variety of bioactive chemical compounds of which the biosynthesis may involve transport of a wide range of substrates mediated by oligopeptide transporters (OPT). However, information about the OPT family in the plant kingdom is still limited. Only 17 and 18 OPT genes have been characterized for Oryza sativa and Arabidopsis thaliana, respectively. Additionally, few comprehensive studies incorporating the phylogeny, gene structure, paralogs evolution, expression profiling, and co-expression network between transcription factors and OPT genes have been reported for ginseng and other species. In the present study, we performed those analyses comprehensively with both online tools and standalone tools. As a result, we identified a total of 268 non-redundant OPT genes from 12 flowering plants of which 37 were from ginseng. These OPT genes were clustered into two distinct clades in which clade-specific motif compositions were considerably conservative. The distribution of OPT paralogs was indicative of segmental duplication and subsequent structural variation. Expression patterns based on two sources of RNA-Sequence datasets suggested that some OPT genes were expressed in both an organ-specific and tissue-specific manner and might be involved in the functional development of plants. Further co-expression analysis of OPT genes and transcription factors indicated 141 positive and 11 negative links, which shows potent regulators for OPT genes. Overall, the data obtained from our study contribute to a better understanding of the complexity of the OPT gene family in ginseng and other flowering plants. This genetic resource will help improve the interpretation on mechanisms of metabolism transportation and signal transduction during plant development for Panax ginseng.


Genome ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 61 (2) ◽  
pp. 121-130 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chenghao Zhang ◽  
Wenqi Dong ◽  
Zong-an Huang ◽  
MyeongCheoul Cho ◽  
Qingcang Yu ◽  
...  

Auxin plays key roles in regulating plant growth and development as well as in response to environmental stresses. The intercellular transport of auxin is mediated by the following four gene families: ATP-binding cassette family B (ABCB), auxin resistant1/like aux1 (AUX/LAX), PIN-formed (PIN), and PIN-like (PILS). Here, the latest assembled pepper (Capsicum annuum L.) genome was used to characterise and analyse the CaLAX and CaPIN gene families. Genome-wide investigations into these families, including chromosomal distributions, phytogenic relationships, and intron/exon structures, were performed. In total, 4 CaLAX and 10 CaPIN genes were mapped to 10 chromosomes. Most of these genes exhibited varied tissue-specific expression patterns assessed by quantitative real-time PCR. The expression profiles of the CaLAX and CaPIN genes under various abiotic stresses (salt, drought, and cold), exogenous phytohormones (IAA, 6-BA, ABA, SA, and MeJA), and polar auxin transport inhibitor treatments were evaluated. Most CaLAX and CaPIN genes were altered by abiotic stress at the transcriptional level in both shoots and roots, and many CaLAX and CaPIN genes were regulated by exogenous phytohormones. Our study helps to identify candidate auxin transporter genes and to further analyse their biological functions in pepper development and in its adaptation to environmental stresses.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xin Zhang ◽  
Xiaojin Zhou ◽  
Suzhen Li ◽  
Jiaxing Huang ◽  
Sen Pang ◽  
...  

Abstract Background: Nicotianamine (NA) serves as not only the major chelator for iron transport but also the intermediate for synthesizing mugineic acid family phytosiderophores (MAs) which are secreted by graminaceous plants for Fe uptake. Therefore, the production and secretion of MAs are key steps for maintaining iron homeostasis in plants. Nicotianamine aminotransferase (NAAT), 2’-deoxymugineic acid synthase (DMAS), MAs efflux transporter (TOM), and efflux transporter of NA (ENA) were identified to be involved in these processes in rice and barley, whereas little systematic study has been performed in maize (Zea mays.L). Results: Here, we identified five ZmNAAT, nine ZmDMAS, eleven ZmTOM, and two ZmENA genes in maize by genome mining. RNA-sequencing (RNA-seq) and quantitative real-time PCR (qRT-PCR) analysis revealed that the expression of these genes exhibited diverse tissue specificity and different responses to environmental iron conditions. Moreover, the expression patterns were related to their evolution relationships. In particular, the ZmNAAT family can be classified into two subgroups, with one group showed inhibited expression in root under iron excess status and another subclass were repressed in shoot under both iron deficiency and excess. Likewise, the expression of ZmDMAS1 was stimulated under iron deficiency, while the remaining genes fell into two sub-clades with different expression patterns. Significant up-regulation of ZmTOM1, ZmTOM3 and ZmENA1 were observed under iron starvation, while ZmTOM2 was induced under both iron-excess and deficiency. These results reflect changing demands for the synthesis and secretion of NA/MAs to balance iron homeostasis under fluctuating conditions. All the examined ZmNAAT and ZmDMAS proteins localized in cytoplasm, while plasma and tonoplast membrane, endomembrane, and vesicle localization were observed for ZmTOM and ZmENA proteins. These results indicate that ZmTOM and ZmENA proteins may contribute to not only intercellular export but also intracellular sequestration of NA and MAs to facilitate iron homeostasis. Conclusions: Our results suggest that different gene expression profiles and subcellular localization of ZmNAAT, ZmDMAS, ZmTOM, and ZmENA members may enable dedicate regulation of NA and phytosiderophores (PS) metabolism, shedding light on the understanding of iron-homeostasis in maize. Additionally, we also provided candidate genes for breeding iron-rich maize varieties.


Genes ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (8) ◽  
pp. 927
Author(s):  
Xifang Zong ◽  
Qi Yan ◽  
Fan Wu ◽  
Qian Ma ◽  
Jiyu Zhang

Plant-specific NAC (NAM, ATAF, CUC) transcription factor (TF) family plays important roles in biological processes such as plant growth and response to stress. Nevertheless, no information is known about NAC TFs in Cleistogenes songorica, a prominent xerophyte desert grass in northwestern China. In this study, 162 NAC genes were found from the Cleistogenes songorica genome, among which 156 C. songoricaNAC (CsNAC) genes (96.3%) were mapped onto 20 chromosomes. The phylogenetic tree constructed by CsNAC and rice NAC TFs can be separated into 14 subfamilies. Syntenic and Ka/Ks analyses showed that CsNACs were primarily expanded by genomewide replication events, and purifying selection was the primary force driving the evolution of CsNAC family genes. The CsNAC gene expression profiles showed that 36 CsNAC genes showed differential expression between cleistogamous (CL) and chasmogamous (CH) flowers. One hundred and two CsNAC genes showed differential expression under heat, cold, drought, salt and ABA treatment. Twenty-three CsNAC genes were commonly differentially expressed both under stress responses and during dimorphic floret development. Gene Ontology (GO) annotation, coexpression network and qRT-PCR tests revealed that these CsNAC genes may simultaneously regulate dimorphic floret development and the response to stress. Our results may help to characterize the NAC transcription factors in C. songorica and provide new insights into the functional research and application of the NAC family in crop improvement, especially in dimorphic floret plants.


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