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Comparative transcriptomics provides insight into the evolution of cold response in Pooideae

Lars Grønvold, Marian Schubert, Simen R. Sandve, Siri Fjellheim, View ORCID ProfileTorgeir R. Hvidsten
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/151431
Lars Grønvold
1Faculty of Chemistry, Biotechnology and Food Science, Norwegian University of Life Sciences, NO-1432, Ås, Norway.
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  • For correspondence: torgeir.r.hvidsten@nmbu.no
Marian Schubert
2Department of Plant Sciences, Norwegian University of Life Sciences, Ås NO-1432, Norway.
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  • For correspondence: torgeir.r.hvidsten@nmbu.no
Simen R. Sandve
3Centre for Integrative Genetics (CIGENE), Department of Animal and Aquacultural Sciences, Norwegian University of Life Sciences, NO-1432, Ås, Norway.
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Siri Fjellheim
2Department of Plant Sciences, Norwegian University of Life Sciences, Ås NO-1432, Norway.
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Torgeir R. Hvidsten
1Faculty of Chemistry, Biotechnology and Food Science, Norwegian University of Life Sciences, NO-1432, Ås, Norway.
4Umeå Plant Science Centre, Department of Plant Physiology, Umeå University, SE-90187, Umeå, Sweden.
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Abstract

Background Understanding how complex traits evolve through adaptive changes in gene regulation remains a major challenge in evolutionary biology. Over the last ~50 million years, Earth has experienced climate cooling and ancestrally tropical plants have adapted to expanding temperate environments. The grass subfamily Pooideae dominates the grass flora of the temperate regions, but conserved cold-response genes that might have played a role in the cold adaptation to temperate climate remain unidentified.

Results To establish if molecular responses to cold are conserved throughout the Pooideae phylogeny, we assembled the transcriptomes of five species spanning early to later diverging lineages, and compared short-and long-term cold response in orthologous genes based on gene expression data. We confirmed that most genes previously identified as cold responsive in barley also responded to cold in our barley experiment. Interestingly, comparing cold response across the lineages using 8633 high confidence ortholog groups revealed that nearly half of all cold responsive genes were species specific and more closely related species did not share higher numbers of cold responsive genes than more distantly related species. Also, the previously identified cold-responsive barley genes displayed low conservation of cold response across species. Nonetheless, more genes than expected by chance shared cold response, both based on previously studied genes and based on the high confidence ortholog groups. Noticeable, all five species shared short-term cold response in nine general stress genes as well as the ability to down-regulate the photosynthetic machinery during cold temperatures.

Conclusions We observed widespread lineage specific cold response in genes with conserved sequence across the Pooideae phylogeny. This is consistent with phylogenetic dating and historic temperature data which suggest that selection pressure resulting from dramatic global cooling must have acted on already diverged lineages. To what degree lineage specific evolution acted primarily through gain or loss of cold response remains unclear, however, phylogeny-wide conservation of certain genes and processes indicated that the last common ancestor may have possessed some cold response.

Copyright 
The copyright holder for this preprint is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under a CC-BY-ND 4.0 International license.
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Posted October 12, 2017.
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Comparative transcriptomics provides insight into the evolution of cold response in Pooideae
Lars Grønvold, Marian Schubert, Simen R. Sandve, Siri Fjellheim, Torgeir R. Hvidsten
bioRxiv 151431; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/151431
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Comparative transcriptomics provides insight into the evolution of cold response in Pooideae
Lars Grønvold, Marian Schubert, Simen R. Sandve, Siri Fjellheim, Torgeir R. Hvidsten
bioRxiv 151431; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/151431

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