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Early Drought-Responsive Genes Are Variable and Relevant to Drought Tolerance
Journal article   Open access

Early Drought-Responsive Genes Are Variable and Relevant to Drought Tolerance

Cheng He, Yicong Du, Junjie Fu, Erliang Zeng, Sunghun Park, Frank White, Jun Zheng and Sanzhen Liu
G3 (Bethesda, Md.), Vol.10(5), pp.1657-1670
05/04/2020
DOI: 10.1534/g3.120.401199
PMID: 32161086
url
https://doi.org/10.1534/g3.120.401199View
Published (Version of record) Open Access

Abstract

Drought stress is an important crop yield limiting factor worldwide. Plant physiological responses to drought stress are driven by changes in gene expression. While drought-responsive genes (DRGs) have been identified in maize, regulation patterns of gene expression during progressive water deficits remain to be elucidated. In this study, we generated time-series transcriptomic data from the maize inbred line B73 under well-watered and drought conditions. Comparisons between the two conditions identified 8,626 DRGs and the stages (early, middle, and late drought) at which DRGs occurred. Different functional groups of genes were regulated at the three stages. Specifically, early and middle DRGs display higher copy number variation among diverse lines, and they exhibited stronger associations with drought tolerance as compared to late DRGs. In addition, correlation of expression between small RNAs (sRNAs) and DRGs from the same samples identified 201 negatively sRNA/DRG correlated pairs, including genes showing high levels of association with drought tolerance, such as two glutamine synthetase genes, and The characterization of dynamic gene responses to progressive drought stresses indicates important adaptive roles of early and middle DRGs, as well as roles played by sRNAs in gene expression regulation upon drought stress.
transcriptomics Zea mays time-series small RNA drought

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