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Title: Transcriptomic analysis of field-droughted sorghum from seedling to maturity reveals biotic and metabolic responses

Journal Article · · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
ORCiD logo [1];  [2]; ORCiD logo [1];  [3];  [1]; ORCiD logo [1];  [1];  [1];  [4];  [4]; ORCiD logo [2];  [1];  [2];  [1];  [3];  [2];  [5];  [6]; ORCiD logo [7]; ORCiD logo [8] more »;  [9];  [3];  [2];  [1];  [4]; ORCiD logo [10];  [1]; ORCiD logo [1] « less
  1. Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA (United States)
  2. Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
  3. Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA (United States); US Department of Agriculture–Agricultural Research Service, Albany, CA (United States)
  4. Univ. of California Agriculture and Natural Resources, Parlier, CA (United States)
  5. Boyce Thompson Inst., Ithaca, NY (United States)
  6. Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States); Univ. of California, Merced, CA (United States)
  7. Pacific Northwest National Lab. (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States)
  8. Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA (United States); Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
  9. Univ. of California, Five Points, CA (United States); Univ. of California, Davis, CA (United States)
  10. Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States); Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA (United States)

Drought is the most important environmental stress limiting crop yields. The C4 cereal sorghum [Sorghum bicolor(L.) Moench] is a critical food, forage, and emerging bioenergy crop that is notably drought-tolerant. We conducted a large-scale field experiment, imposing preflowering and postflowering drought stress on 2 genotypes of sorghum across a tightly resolved time series, from plant emergence to postanthesis, resulting in a dataset of nearly 400 transcriptomes. We observed a fast and global transcriptomic response in leaf and root tissues with clear temporal patterns, including modulation of well-known drought pathways. We also identified genotypic differences in core photosynthesis and reactive oxygen species scavenging pathways, highlighting possible mechanisms of drought tolerance and of the delayed senescence, characteristic of the stay-green phenotype. Lastly, we discovered a large-scale depletion in the expression of genes critical to arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) symbiosis, with a corresponding drop in AM fungal mass in the plants’ roots.

Research Organization:
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States); University of California, Berkeley, CA (United States); Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Science (SC), Biological and Environmental Research (BER)
Grant/Contract Number:
AC05-76RL01830; SC0012460; SC0014081; AC02-05CH11231
OSTI ID:
1577228
Alternate ID(s):
OSTI ID: 1582406; OSTI ID: 1591847; OSTI ID: 1660760
Report Number(s):
PNNL-SA-140530
Journal Information:
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, Vol. 116, Issue 52; ISSN 0027-8424
Publisher:
National Academy of SciencesCopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Citation Metrics:
Cited by: 87 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science

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Stay-green plants: what do they tell us about the molecular mechanism of leaf senescence journal June 2013
Overexpression of OsWRKY72 gene interferes in the abscisic acid signal and auxin transport pathway of Arabidopsis journal July 2010
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Sorghum stay-green QTL individually reduce post-flowering drought-induced leaf senescence journal November 2006
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Plant Signaling and Metabolic Pathways Enabling Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Symbiosis journal August 2017
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Stay-green alleles individually enhance grain yield in sorghum under drought by modifying canopy development and water uptake patterns journal June 2014
Alternative oxidase respiration maintains both mitochondrial and chloroplast function during drought journal August 2016
Diverse Sorghum bicolor accessions show marked variation in growth and transcriptional responses to arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi journal January 2019
The Sorghum bicolor reference genome: improved assembly, gene annotations, a transcriptome atlas, and signatures of genome organization journal December 2017
Predisposition in Plant Disease: Exploiting the Nexus in Abiotic and Biotic Stress Perception and Response journal August 2014
Drought stress tolerance strategies revealed by RNA-Seq in two sorghum genotypes with contrasting WUE journal May 2016
Two Transcription Factors, DREB1 and DREB2, with an EREBP/AP2 DNA Binding Domain Separate Two Cellular Signal Transduction Pathways in Drought- and Low-Temperature-Responsive Gene Expression, Respectively, in Arabidopsis journal August 1998
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Overexpression of Ferredoxin, PETF, Enhances Tolerance to Heat Stress in Chlamydomonas reinhardtii journal October 2013
Over-represented promoter motifs in abiotic stress-induced DREB genes of rice and sorghum and their probable role in regulation of gene expression journal July 2010

Cited By (3)

Fungal community assembly in drought-stressed sorghum shows stochasticity, selection, and universal ecological dynamics journal January 2020
Multidisciplinary Education for Oxygen Prescription journal September 1996
Sorghum’s Whole-Plant Transcriptome and Proteome Responses to Drought Stress: A Review journal July 2021