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Transcriptomic analysis comparing stay-green and senescent Sorghum bicolor lines identifies a role for proline biosynthesis in the stay-green trait

Johnson, Stephanie M.; Cummins, Ian; Lim, Fei Ling; Slabas, Antoni R.; Knight, Marc R.

Transcriptomic analysis comparing stay-green and senescent Sorghum bicolor lines identifies a role for proline biosynthesis in the stay-green trait Thumbnail


Authors

Stephanie M. Johnson

Ian Cummins

Fei Ling Lim

Antoni R. Slabas



Abstract

Sorghum bicolor is an important cereal crop grown on the arid and semi-arid regions of >98 different countries. These regions are such that this crop is often subjected to low water conditions, which can compromise yields. Stay-green sorghum plants are able to retain green leaf area for longer under drought conditions and as such have higher yields than their senescent counterparts. However, the molecular and physiological basis of this drought tolerance is yet to be fully understood. Here, a transcriptomic approach was used to compare gene expression between stay-green (B35) and senescent (R16) sorghum varieties. Ontological analysis of the differentially expressed transcripts identified an enrichment of genes involved with the ‘response to osmotic stress’ Gene Ontology (GO) category. In particular, delta1-pyrroline-5-carboxylate synthase 2 (P5CS2) was highly expressed in the stay-green line compared with the senescent line, and this high expression was correlated with higher proline levels. Comparisons of the differentially expressed genes with those that lie in known stay-green qualitative trait loci (QTLs) revealed that P5CS2 lies within the Stg1 QTL. Polymorphisms in known cis-elements were identified in the putative promoter region of P5CS2 and these could be responsible for the differences in the expression of this gene. This study provides greater insight into the stay-green trait in sorghum. This will be greatly beneficial not only to improve our understanding of drought tolerance mechanisms in sorghum, but also to facilitate the improvement of future sorghum cultivars by marker-assisted selection (MAS).

Citation

Johnson, S. M., Cummins, I., Lim, F. L., Slabas, A. R., & Knight, M. R. (2015). Transcriptomic analysis comparing stay-green and senescent Sorghum bicolor lines identifies a role for proline biosynthesis in the stay-green trait. Journal of Experimental Botany, 66(22), 7061-7073. https://doi.org/10.1093/jxb/erv405

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Jul 31, 2015
Online Publication Date Aug 28, 2015
Publication Date Dec 1, 2015
Deposit Date Dec 6, 2015
Publicly Available Date Apr 7, 2016
Journal Journal of Experimental Botany
Print ISSN 0022-0957
Electronic ISSN 1460-2431
Publisher Oxford University Press
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 66
Issue 22
Pages 7061-7073
DOI https://doi.org/10.1093/jxb/erv405
Public URL https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1417121

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Publisher Licence URL
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Copyright Statement
© The Author 2015. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for Experimental Biology.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.






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