Project description:Identification and sequencing of lignin biosynthesis, lignification and lignin pathway control in the orphan grain crop, Digitaria exilis
Project description:Foxtail millet (Setaria italica L. P. Beauv) has been considered as a tractable model crop in recent years due to its short growing cycle, lower repetitive DNA, inbreeding nature, small diploid genome, and outstanding abiotic stress-tolerance characteristics. With modern agriculture often facing various adversities, it’s urgent to dissect the mechanisms of how foxtail millet responds and adapts to drought and stress on the proteomic-level.
Project description:Digitaria exilis, white fonio, is a minor but vital crop of West Africa that is valued for its resilience in hot, dry, and low-fertility environments and for the exceptional quality of its grain for human nutrition. Its success is hindered, however, by a low degree of plant breeding and improvement. We sequenced the fonio genome with long-read SMRT-cell technology, yielding a ∼761 Mb assembly in 3,329 contigs (N50, 1.73 Mb; L50, 126). The assembly approaches a high level of completion, with a BUSCO score of >99%. The fonio genome was found to be a tetraploid, with most of the genome retained as homoeologous duplications that differ overall by ∼4.3%, neglecting indels. The 2 genomes within fonio were found to have begun their independent divergence ∼3.1 million years ago. The repeat content (>49%) is fairly standard for a grass genome of this size, but the ratio of Gypsy to Copia long terminal repeat retrotransposons (∼6.7) was found to be exceptionally high. Several genes related to future improvement of the crop were identified including shattering, plant height, and grain size. Analysis of fonio population genetics, primarily in Mali, indicated that the crop has extensive genetic diversity that is largely partitioned across a north-south gradient coinciding with the Sahel and Sudan grassland domains. We provide a high-quality assembly, annotation, and diversity analysis for a vital African crop. The availability of this information should empower future research into further domestication and improvement of fonio.
Project description:Climate change is having a drastic impact on global agriculture. Indeed stress factors such as elevated temperature, drought and rising atmospheric CO2 reduce arable land surface, crop cultivation and yield and overall sustainable food production on earth. However, plants possess immense innate adaptive plasticity and a more in-depth understanding of the underlying molecular mechanisms is crucial to strategize for sustaining populations under worsening climate change. Brassinosteroids (BRs) are constitutive plant growth regulators that also control plant adaptation to abiotic stress. Downstream components of the BR biosynthetic pathway, BES1/BZR1 play central role in thermomorphogenesis, but involvement of the BR receptors is not well understood. Here, we show that the BRL3 receptor is essential for plant adaptation to warmer environment. The brl3 mutants lack thermal responsiveness and the BRL3 overexpression causes hyper-thermomorphogenesis response. BRL3 activates canonical BRI1 pathway upon elevated temperature. Further, phloem-specific expression of BRL3 completely rescues the growth adaptation defects of the brl3 mutant. This ability of BRL3 represents a previously unknown thermoresponsive mechanism specifically from phloem and uncouples the roles of BR receptors in generic growth vs adaptation to changing climate conditions.
Project description:Climate change and population growth threaten global freshwater resources and food security. Crassulacean acid metabolism (CAM) is a specialized photosynthetic adaptation that exhibits superior water-use efficiency (WUE) compared to C3 and C4 photosynthesis. Mesembryanthemum crystallinum (common ice plant) is capable of shifting from C3 to CAM, making it a key model for investigating the photosynthesis plasticity and its potential to enhance crop stress resilience in a changing climate. To date, the molecular mechanisms underlying this high-WUE photosynthetic transition remain largely unknown.