Project description:Durum wheat is an important cereal crop grown mainly in semi-arid environments (e.g. Mediterranean regions) characterized by water scarcity and high temperatures often occurring at the same time. This work reports on a transcriptomic analysis carried out on two durum wheat cultivars (Cappelli and Ofanto) characterized by different water use efficiency (WUE), grown to booting stage and subjected to a combination of drought and heat stresses, a situation similar to the experience of a crop grown in Mediterranean environments and exposed to a terminal heat/drought stress. ****[PLEXdb(http://www.plexdb.org) has submitted this series at GEO on behalf of the original contributor, alessio. The equivalent experiment is TA47 at PLEXdb.]
Project description:Water-deficit and heat stress negatively impact crop production. Mechanisms underlying the response of durum wheat to such stresses are not well understood. With the new durum wheat genome assembly, we conducted the first multi-omics analysis with next-generation sequencing, providing a comprehensive description of the durum wheat small RNAome (sRNAome), mRNA transcriptome, and degradome. Single and combined water-deficit and heat stress were applied to stress-tolerant and -sensitive Australian genotypes to study their response at multiple time-points during reproduction. Analysis of 120 sRNA libraries identified 523 microRNAs (miRNAs), of which 55 were novel. Differentially expressed miRNAs (DEMs) were identified that had significantly altered expression subject to stress type, genotype, and time-point. Transcriptome sequencing identified 49,436 genes, with differentially expressed genes (DEGs) linked to processes associated with hormone homeostasis, photosynthesis, and signaling. With the first durum wheat degradome report, over 100,000 transcript target sites were characterized, and new miRNA-mRNA regulatory pairs were discovered. Integrated omics analysis identified key miRNA-mRNA modules (particularly, novel pairs of miRNAs and transcription factors) with antagonistic regulatory patterns subject to different stresses. GO (Gene Ontology) and KEGG (Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes) enrichment analysis revealed significant roles in plant growth and stress adaptation. Our research provides novel and fundamental knowledge, at the whole-genome level, for transcriptional and post-transcriptional stress regulation in durum wheat.
Project description:Wheat is one of the most significant crops in terms of human consumption in the world. In a climate change scenario, extreme weather event such as heatwaves will be more frequent especially during the grain-filling (GF) stage and could affect grain weight and quality of crops. Molecular mechanisms underlying the response to short heat stress (HS) have been widely reported for the hexaploid wheat (Triticum aestivum) but the regulatory heat stress mechanisms in tetraploid durum wheat (Triticum turgidum ssp. durum) remain partially understood. In this work, we performed a transcriptomic analysis of durum wheat grains to HS during early GF to identify key HS response genes and their predicted regulatory networks under glasshouse conditions.
