| 1. |
- Bag, Pushan, 1993-
(author)
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How could Christmas trees remain evergreen? : photosynthetic acclimation of Scots pine and Norway spruce needles during winter
- 2022
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Plants and other green organisms harvest sunlight by green chlorophyll pigments and covertit to chemical energy (sugars) and oxygen in a process called photosynthesis providing the foundation for life on Earth. Although it is unanimously believed that oceanic phytoplanktons are the main contributors to the global photosynthesis, the contribution of coniferous boreal forests distributed across vast regions of the northern hemisphere cannot be undermined. Hence boreal forests account signifificantly for social, economical and environmental sustainability. Not only do conifers thrive in the tundra regions with extreme climate, but they also maintain their needles green over the boreal winter. A question remains; what makes them so resilient? In this respect, we aimed to understand the remarkable winter adaptation strategies in two dominant boreal coniferous species,i.e., Pinus sylvestris and Picea abies. First, we mapped the transcriptional landscape in Norway spruce (Picea abies) needles over the annual cycle. Transcriptional changes in the nascent needles reflflected a sequence of developmental processes and active vegetative growth during early summer and summer. Later after maturation, transcriptome reflflected activated defense against biotic factors and acclimationin response to abiotic environmental cues such as freezing temperatures during winter. Secondly, by monitoring the photosynthetic performance of Scot pine needles, we found that the trees face extreme stress during the early spring (Feb-Mar) when sub-zero temperatures are accompanied by high solar radiation. At this time, drastic changes occur in the thylakoid membranes of the chloroplast that allows the mixing of photosystem I and photosystem II that typically remain laterally segregated. This triggers direct energy transfer from PSII to PSI and thus protects PSII from damage. Furthermore, we found that this loss of lateral segregation may be a consequence of triple phosphorylationof Lhcb1 (Light harvesting complex1 of photosystem II). The structural changes in thylakoid membranes also lead to changes inthe thylakoid macro domain organisationand pigment protein composition. Furthermore, we discovered that while PSII is protected by direct energy transfer, the protection of PSI is provided through photoreduction of oxygen by flavodiiron proteins, which in turn allows P700 to stay in an oxidised state necessary for direct energy transfer. These coordinated cascades of changes concomitantly protect both PSI and PSII to maintain the needles green over the winter.
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| 2. |
- Apuli, Rami-Petteri, et al.
(author)
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Inferring the Genomic Landscape of Recombination Rate Variation in European Aspen (Populus tremula)
- 2020
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In: G3. - : GENETICS SOCIETY AMERICA. - 2160-1836. ; 10:1, s. 299-309
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The rate of meiotic recombination is one of the central factors determining genome-wide levels of linkage disequilibrium which has important consequences for the efficiency of natural selection and for the dissection of quantitative traits. Here we present a new, high-resolution linkage map for Populus tremula that we use to anchor approximately two thirds of the P. tremula draft genome assembly on to the expected 19 chromosomes, providing us with the first chromosome-scale assembly for P. tremula (Table 2). We then use this resource to estimate variation in recombination rates across the P. tremula genome and compare these results to recombination rates based on linkage disequilibrium in a large number of unrelated individuals. We also assess how variation in recombination rates is associated with a number of genomic features, such as gene density, repeat density and methylation levels. We find that recombination rates obtained from the two methods largely agree, although the LD-based method identifies a number of genomic regions with very high recombination rates that the map-based method fails to detect. Linkage map and LD-based estimates of recombination rates are positively correlated and show similar correlations with other genomic features, showing that both methods can accurately infer recombination rate variation across the genome. Recombination rates are positively correlated with gene density and negatively correlated with repeat density and methylation levels, suggesting that recombination is largely directed toward gene regions in P. tremula.
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| 3. |
- Lin, Yao-Cheng, et al.
(author)
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Functional and evolutionary genomic inferences in Populus through genome and population sequencing of American and European aspen
- 2018
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In: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. - : NATL ACAD SCIENCES. - 0027-8424 .- 1091-6490. ; 115:46, s. E10970-E10978
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The Populus genus is one of the major plant model systems, but genomic resources have thus far primarily been available for poplar species, and primarily Populus trichocarpa (Torr. & Gray), which was the first tree with a whole-genome assembly. To further advance evolutionary and functional genomic analyses in Populus, we produced genome assemblies and population genetics resources of two aspen species, Populus tremula L. and Populus tremuloides Michx. The two aspen species have distributions spanning the Northern Hemisphere, where they are keystone species supporting a wide variety of dependent communities and produce a diverse array of secondary metabolites. Our analyses show that the two aspens share a similar genome structure and a highly conserved gene content with P. trichocarpa but display substantially higher levels of heterozygosity. Based on population resequencing data, we observed widespread positive and negative selection acting on both coding and noncoding regions. Furthermore, patterns of genetic diversity and molecular evolution in aspen are influenced by a number of features, such as expression level, coexpression network connectivity, and regulatory variation. To maximize the community utility of these resources, we have integrated all presented data within the PopGenIE web resource (PopGenIE.org).
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| 4. |
- Schiffthaler, Bastian, et al.
(author)
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An integrated functional genomics and systems genetics analysis of leaf shape in Populus tremula
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Other publication (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Leaf shape is an important component of our relationship with the living world, representing a defining feature of how we recognise and classify plant species. There is extensive variation in the form and function of leaves within and between species. In the current study we utilised variation in leaf shape represented among individuals of a collection of Eurasian aspen (Populus tremula L.) sampled across Sweden and the remarkable extent of heterophylly present to establish morphological, cellular and transcriptional developmental time lines. We performed gene expression network and phenotypical regression analyses to identify genes of central importance or that were highly predictive of shape and size phenotypes during leaf development using a systems biology approach. We complemented this developmental study with a genome wide association study of leaf shape variation to identify single nucleotide polymorphisms associated with leaf shape and size, their genomic context and the biological role of associated genes. We then compared these association candidate genes to differentially expressed genes between groups of genotypes with highly contrasting leaf shapes, also considering whether there were expression quantitative trait loci associated with the genes. We demonstrate that our developmental gene expression series captured known biology for homologs of functionally characterised Arabidopsis thaliana genes and biological processes of importance during leaf development. We identified genes of high importance from the developmental series and natural variation analyses. These included genes with characterised functions in leaf development in addition to many novel candidates. Our systems genetics approach identified numerous genes supported by the developmental time series, phenotypic and expression association mapping and differential expression between phenotypic extremes. As such, we describe a rich resource for directing future functional characterisation studies and a comprehensive data resource characterising the role of gene expression during leaf development in aspen.
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| 5. |
- Bylesjö, Max, et al.
(author)
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Integrated analysis of transcript, protein and metabolite data to study lignin biosynthesis in hybrid aspen
- 2009
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In: Journal of Proteome Research. - : American Chemical Society (ACS). - 1535-3893 .- 1535-3907. ; 8:1, s. 199-210
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Tree biotechnology will soon reach a mature state where it will influence the overall supply of fiber, energy and wood products. We are now ready to make the transition from identifying candidate genes, controlling important biological processes, to discovering the detailed molecular function of these genes on a broader, more holistic, systems biology level. In this paper, a strategy is outlined for informative data generation and integrated modeling of systematic changes in transcript, protein and metabolite profiles measured from hybrid aspen samples. The aim is to study characteristics of common changes in relation to genotype-specific perturbations affecting the lignin biosynthesis and growth. We show that a considerable part of the systematic effects in the system can be tracked across all platforms and that the approach has a high potential value in functional characterization of candidate genes.
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| 6. |
- Mähler, Niklas, et al.
(author)
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Leaf shape in Populus tremula is a complex, omnigenic trait
- 2020
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In: Ecology and Evolution. - : John Wiley & Sons. - 2045-7758. ; 10:21, s. 11922-11940
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Leaf shape is a defining feature of how we recognize and classify plant species. Although there is extensive variation in leaf shape within many species, few studies have disentangled the underlying genetic architecture. We characterized the genetic architecture of leaf shape variation in Eurasian aspen (Populus tremula L.) by performing genome‐wide association study (GWAS) for physiognomy traits. To ascertain the roles of identified GWAS candidate genes within the leaf development transcriptional program, we generated RNA‐Seq data that we used to perform gene co‐expression network analyses from a developmental series, which is publicly available within the PlantGenIE resource. We additionally used existing gene expression measurements across the population to analyze GWAS candidate genes in the context of a population‐wide co‐expression network and to identify genes that were differentially expressed between groups of individuals with contrasting leaf shapes. These data were integrated with expression GWAS (eQTL) results to define a set of candidate genes associated with leaf shape variation. Our results identified no clear adaptive link to leaf shape variation and indicate that leaf shape traits are genetically complex, likely determined by numerous small‐effect variations in gene expression. Genes associated with shape variation were peripheral within the population‐wide co‐expression network, were not highly connected within the leaf development co‐expression network, and exhibited signatures of relaxed selection. As such, our results are consistent with the omnigenic model.
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| 7. |
- Street, Nathaniel Robert, 1979-, et al.
(author)
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A cross-species transcriptomics approach to identify genes involved in leaf development
- 2008
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In: BMC Genomics. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 1471-2164. ; 9:1, s. 539-
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Journal article (pop. science, debate, etc.)abstract
- BackgroundWe have made use of publicly available gene expression data to identify transcription factors and transcriptional modules (regulons) associated with leaf development in Populus. Different tissue types were compared to identify genes informative in the discrimination of leaf and non-leaf tissues. Transcriptional modules within this set of genes were identified in a much wider set of microarray data collected from leaves in a number of developmental, biotic, abiotic and transgenic experiments.ResultsTranscription factors that were over represented in leaf EST libraries and that were useful for discriminating leaves from other tissues were identified, revealing that the C2C2-YABBY, CCAAT-HAP3 and 5, MYB, and ZF-HD families are particularly important in leaves. The expression of transcriptional modules and transcription factors was examined across a number of experiments to select those that were particularly active during the early stages of leaf development. Two transcription factors were found to collocate to previously published Quantitative Trait Loci (QTL) for leaf length. We also found that miRNA family 396 may be important in the control of leaf development, with three members of the family collocating with clusters of leaf development QTL.ConclusionThis work provides a set of candidate genes involved in the control and processes of leaf development. This resource can be used for a wide variety of purposes such as informing the selection of candidate genes for association mapping or for the selection of targets for reverse genetics studies to further understanding of the genetic control of leaf size and shape.
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