RNA-Seq analysis identifies genes associated with differential reproductive success under drought-stress in accessions of wild barley Hordeum spontaneum

BMC Plant Biology

Research Article

Abraham B. Korol¹  Sariel Hübner²  Karl J. Schmid³ 

[1] Department of Evolutionary and Environmental Biology, University of Haifa, Mt. Carmel 31905, Haifa, Israel;Department of Evolutionary and Environmental Biology, University of Haifa, Mt. Carmel 31905, Haifa, Israel;Current address: Department of Botany, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada;Institute of Plant Breeding, Seed Science and Population Genetics, University of Hohenheim, D-70593, Stuttgart, Germany;

关键词: Drought tolerance;    Hordeum spontaneum;    Reproductive success;    Adaptation, RNA-Seq;   

DOI  :  10.1186/s12870-015-0528-z

 received in 2014-12-28, accepted in 2015-05-20,  发布年份 2015

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundThe evolutionary basis of reproductive success in different environments is of major interest in the study of plant adaptation. Since the reproductive stage is particularly sensitive to drought, genes affecting reproductive success during this stage are key players in the evolution of adaptive mechanisms. We used an ecological genomics approach to investigate the reproductive response of drought-tolerant and sensitive wild barley accessions originating from different habitats in the Levant.ResultsWe sequenced mRNA extracted from spikelets at the flowering stage in drought-treated and control plants. The barley genome was used for a reference-guided assembly and differential expression analysis. Our approach enabled to detect biological processes affecting grain production under drought stress. We detected novel candidate genes and differentially expressed alleles associated with drought tolerance. Drought associated genes were shown to be more conserved than non-associated genes, and drought-tolerance genes were found to evolve more rapidly than other drought associated genes.ConclusionsWe show that reproductive success under drought stress is not a habitat-specific trait but a shared physiological adaptation that appeared to evolve recently in the evolutionary history of wild barley. Exploring the genomic basis of reproductive success under stress in crop wild progenitors is expected to have considerable ecological and economical applications.

【 授权许可】

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© Hübner et al. 2015. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.