Gene Expression Responses to Sequential Nutrient Deficiency Stresses in Soybean

Abstract

Throughout the growing season, crops experience a multitude of short periods of various abiotic stresses. These stress events have long-term impacts on plant performance and yield. It is imperative to improve our understanding of the genes and biological processes underlying plant stress tolerance to mitigate end of season yield loss. The majority of studies examining transcriptional changes induced by stress focus on single stress events. Few studies have been performed in model or crop species to examine transcriptional responses of plants exposed to repeated or sequential stress exposure, which better reflect field conditions. In this study, we examine the transcriptional profile of soybean plants exposed to iron deficiency stress followed by phosphate deficiency stress (-Fe-Pi). Comparing this response to previous studies, we identified a core suite of genes conserved across all repeated stress exposures (-Fe-Pi, -Fe-Fe, -Pi-Pi). Additionally, we determined transcriptional response to sequential stress exposure (-Fe-Pi) involves genes usually associated with reproduction, not stress responses. These findings highlight the plasticity of the plant transcriptome and the complexity of unraveling stress response pathways.

Interaction between Rag genes results in a unique synergistic transcriptional response that enhances soybean resistance to soybean aphids

“…Of the 1000 Rag1/2 DE genes depicted, 664 (66%) were significant in Rag1/2 (FDR < 0.05), but not significant in Rag1 or in Rag2 using a relaxed cutoff (FDR > 0.25). A similar approach has been used to differentiate genes affected by combined stresses versus the effect of individual stress conditions [ 44 ]. We also compared the observed log2FC values for the 6 h synergistic gene dataset to the expected additive values (log2FC Rag1 + log2FC Rag2 ) (Additional File 3 , Fig.…”

Soybean Root Transcriptomics: Insights into Sucrose Signaling at the Crossroads of Nutrient Deficiency and Biotic Stress Responses

“…Significant research has been devoted to understanding plant responses to nutrient deficiencies. In recent years, transcriptomic approaches, particularly RNA-seq, have made great strides toward the identification of differential gene expression in response to various nutrient deficiencies in plants [26][27][28][29][30][31][32]. However, the underlying mechanism of sucrose signaling is not yet well understood [7,11].…”