Year: 2020
Type: preprint
Abstract: ABSTRACT The effects of drought stress can be devastating to crop production worldwide. A grand challenge facing agriculture is development of crop varieties with improved drought resilience through breeding or biotechnology. To accelerate this, a mechanistic understanding is needed of the regulatory networks underlying drought response in crop genomes and the genetic elements that modulate them. Here, we explore the regulatory landscape of sorghum [ Sorghum bicolor (L.) Moench] in response to controlled-environment drought stress. Sorghum is a C 4 cereal crop with innate drought resilience. To define molecular signatures of drought response, we mapped genome-wide chromatin accessibility using an Assay for Transposase Accessible Chromatin by sequencing and analyzed parallel transcriptional profiles in drought-stressed sorghum shoot and root tissues. Drought-responsive changes in accessibility were largely in proximal promoters of differentially expressed genes and also in distal regions. Data were integrated to infer gene network connections and cis -regulatory modules underlying drought response and the transcription factors that control them. Inspection of pan-genomic data and phenotyping across sorghum diversity revealed variation in genomic signatures that associated with water use efficiency. Our analyses provide drought-inducible regulatory modules in sorghum that can be leveraged for fine-tuning responses to stress, mining for advantageous alleles, and translating across species.
Institution: Donald Danforth Plant Science Center
Language: English
Subfield: Plant Science
Domain: Life Sciences
SDG: Zero hunger
Open Access status: green
Awards: G2277256672, A REFERENCE PHENOTYPING SYSTEM FOR ENERGY SORGHUM, SYSTEMS ANALYSIS OF THE PHYSIOLOGICAL AND MOLECULAR MECHANISMS OF SORGHUM NITROGEN USE EFFICIENCY, WATER USE EFFICIENCY AND INTERACTIONS WITH THE..., ELUCIDATING THE MOLECULAR MECHANISMS UNDERLYING DROUGHT RESILIENCE IN SORGHUM, G6695608538
OpenAlex ID: W3047644363