Browsing by Author "Tang, Yuhong"

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    Elucidation and analyses of the regulatory networks of upland and lowland ecotypes of switchgrass in response to drought and salt stresses
    Zuo, Chunman; Tang, Yuhong; Fu, Hao; Liu, Yiming; Zhang, Xunzhong; Zhao, Bingyu Y.; Xu, Ying (PLOS, 2018-09-24)
    Switchgrass is an important bioenergy crop typically grown in marginal lands, where the plants must often deal with abiotic stresses such as drought and salt. Alamo is known to be more tolerant to both stress types than Dacotah, two ecotypes of switchgrass. Understanding of their stress response and adaptation programs can have important implications to engineering more stress tolerant plants. We present here a computational study by analyzing time-course transcriptomic data of the two ecotypes to elucidate and compare their regulatory systems in response to drought and salt stresses. A total of 1,693 genes (target genes or TGs) are found to be differentially expressed and possibly regulated by 143 transcription factors (TFs) in response to drought stress together in the two ecotypes. Similarly, 1,535 TGs regulated by 110 TFs are identified to be involved in response to salt stress. Two regulatory networks are constructed to predict their regulatory relationships. In addition, a time-dependent hidden Markov model is derived for each ecotype responding to each stress type, to provide a dynamic view of how each regulatory network changes its behavior over time. A few new insights about the response mechanisms are predicted from the regulatory networks and the time-dependent models. Comparative analyses between the network models of the two ecotypes reveal key commonalities and main differences between the two regulatory systems. Overall, our results provide new information about the complex regulatory mechanisms of switchgrass responding to drought and salt stresses.
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    JGI Plant Gene Atlas: an updateable transcriptome resource to improve functional gene descriptions across the plant kingdom
    Sreedasyam, Avinash; Plott, Christopher; Hossain, Md Shakhawat; Lovell, John T.; Grimwood, Jane; Jenkins, Jerry W.; Daum, Christopher; Barry, Kerrie; Carlson, Joseph; Shu, Shengqiang; Phillips, Jeremy; Amirebrahimi, Mojgan; Zane, Matthew; Wang, Mei; Goodstein, David; Haas, Fabian B.; Hiss, Manuel; Perroud, Pierre-Francois; Jawdy, Sara S.; Yang, Yongil; Hu, Rongbin; Johnson, Jenifer; Kropat, Janette; Gallaher, Sean D.; Lipzen, Anna; Shakirov, Eugene; Weng, Xiaoyu; Torres-Jerez, Ivone; Weers, Brock; Conde, Daniel; Pappas, Marilia R.; Liu, Lifeng; Muchlinski, Andrew; Jiang, Hui; Shyu, Christine; Huang, Pu; Sebastian, Jose; Laiben, Carol; Medlin, Alyssa; Carey, Sankalpi; Carrell, Alyssa A.; Chen, Jin-Gui; Perales, Mariano; Swaminathan, Kankshita; Allona, Isabel; Grattapaglia, Dario; Cooper, Elizabeth A.; Tholl, Dorothea; Vogel, John P.; Weston, David J.; Yang, Xiaohan; Brutnell, Thomas P.; Kellogg, Elizabeth A.; Baxter, Ivan; Udvardi, Michael; Tang, Yuhong; Mockler, Todd C.; Juenger, Thomas E.; Mullet, John; Rensing, Stefan A.; Tuskan, Gerald A.; Merchant, Sabeeha S.; Stacey, Gary; Schmutz, Jeremy (Oxford University Press, 2023-08-01)
    Gene functional descriptions offer a crucial line of evidence for candidate genes underlying trait variation. Conversely, plant responses to environmental cues represent important resources to decipher gene function and subsequently provide molecular targets for plant improvement through gene editing. However, biological roles of large proportions of genes across the plant phylogeny are poorly annotated. Here we describe the Joint Genome Institute (JGI) Plant Gene Atlas, an updateable data resource consisting of transcript abundance assays spanning 18 diverse species. To integrate across these diverse genotypes, we analyzed expression profiles, built gene clusters that exhibited tissue/condition specific expression, and tested for transcriptional response to environmental queues. We discovered extensive phylogenetically constrained and condition-specific expression profiles for genes without any previously documented functional annotation. Such conserved expression patterns and tightly co-expressed gene clusters let us assign expression derived additional biological information to 64 495 genes with otherwise unknown functions. The ever-expanding Gene Atlas resource is available at JGI Plant Gene Atlas (https://plantgeneatlas.jgi.doe.gov) and Phytozome (https://phytozome.jgi.doe.gov/), providing bulk access to data and user-specified queries of gene sets. Combined, these web interfaces let users access differentially expressed genes, track orthologs across the Gene Atlas plants, graphically represent co-expressed genes, and visualize gene ontology and pathway enrichments.
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    Overexpression of AtLOV1 in Switchgrass Alters Plant Architecture, Lignin Content, and Flowering Time
    Xu, Bin; Sathitsuksanoh, Noppadon; Tang, Yuhong; Udvardi, Michael K.; Zhang, Ji-Yi; Shen, Zhengxing; Balota, Maria; Harich, Kim; Zhang, Y. H. Percival; Zhao, Bingyu Y. (2012-12-26)
    Background: Switchgrass (Panicum virgatum L.) is a prime candidate crop for biofuel feedstock production in the United States. As it is a self-incompatible polyploid perennial species, breeding elite and stable switchgrass cultivars with traditional breeding methods is very challenging. Translational genomics may contribute significantly to the genetic improvement of switchgrass, especially for the incorporation of elite traits that are absent in natural switchgrass populations. Methodology/Principal Findings: In this study, we constitutively expressed an Arabidopsis NAC transcriptional factor gene, LONG VEGETATIVE PHASE ONE (AtLOV1), in switchgrass. Overexpression of AtLOV1 in switchgrass caused the plants to have a smaller leaf angle by changing the morphology and organization of epidermal cells in the leaf collar region. Also, overexpression of AtLOV1 altered the lignin content and the monolignol composition of cell walls, and caused delayed flowering time. Global gene-expression analysis of the transgenic plants revealed an array of responding genes with predicted functions in plant development, cell wall biosynthesis, and flowering. Conclusions/Significance: To our knowledge, this is the first report of a single ectopically expressed transcription factor altering the leaf angle, cell wall composition, and flowering time of switchgrass, therefore demonstrating the potential advantage of translational genomics for the genetic improvement of this crop.