The resurrection genome of Boea hygrometrica: A blueprint for survival of dehydration

"Drying without dying" is an essential trait in land plant evolution. Unraveling how a unique group of angiosperms, the Resurrection Plants, survive desiccation of their leaves and roots has been hampered by the lack of a foundational genome perspective. Here we report the ∼1,691-Mb sequen...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences - PNAS 2015-05, Vol.112 (18), p.5833-5837
Main Authors: Xiao, Lihong, Yang, Ge, Zhang, Liechi, Yang, Xinhua, Zhao, Shuang, Ji, Zhongzhong, Zhou, Qing, Hu, Min, Wang, Yu, Chen, Ming, Xu, Yu, Jin, Haijing, Xiao, Xuan, Hu, Guipeng, Bao, Fang, Hu, Yong, Wan, Ping, Li, Legong, Deng, Xin, Kuang, Tingyun, Xiang, Chengbin, Zhu, Jian-Kang, Oliver, Melvin J, He, Yikun
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Algorithms
Biological Sciences
Cell Wall - metabolism
Computational Biology
Cytoplasm - metabolism
Dehydration
Desiccation
Evolutionary biology
Flowers & plants
Gene Expression Profiling
Gene Expression Regulation, Plant
Genes, Plant
Genome, Plant
Genomes
Genotype & phenotype
Magnoliopsida - physiology
Phenotype
Photosynthesis
Plant Leaves - metabolism
Plant Proteins - genetics
Protein synthesis
RNA, Ribosomal, 5S - metabolism
Transcriptome
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:"Drying without dying" is an essential trait in land plant evolution. Unraveling how a unique group of angiosperms, the Resurrection Plants, survive desiccation of their leaves and roots has been hampered by the lack of a foundational genome perspective. Here we report the ∼1,691-Mb sequenced genome of Boea hygrometrica, an important resurrection plant model. The sequence revealed evidence for two historical genome-wide duplication events, a compliment of 49,374 protein-coding genes, 29.15% of which are unique (orphan) to Boea and 20% of which (9,888) significantly respond to desiccation at the transcript level. Expansion of early light-inducible protein (ELIP) and 5S rRNA genes highlights the importance of the protection of the photosynthetic apparatus during drying and the rapid resumption of protein synthesis in the resurrection capability of Boea. Transcriptome analysis reveals extensive alternative splicing of transcripts and a focus on cellular protection strategies. The lack of desiccation tolerance-specific genome organizational features suggests the resurrection phenotype evolved mainly by an alteration in the control of dehydration response genes.
ISSN:0027-8424
1091-6490
DOI:10.1073/pnas.1505811112