Divergent gene expression levels between diploid and autotetraploid Tolmiea relative to the total transcriptome, the cell, and biomass

The immediate metabolomic effects of whole-genome duplication in the greater duckweed, Spirodela polyrhiza

PREMISE

In plants, whole-genome duplication (WGD) is a common mutation with profound evolutionary potential. Given the costs associated with a superfluous genome copy, polyploid establishment is enigmatic. However, in the right environment, immediate phenotypic changes following WGD can facilitate establishment. Metabolite abundances are the direct output of the cell's regulatory network and determine much of the impact of environmental and genetic change on the phenotype. While it is well known that an increase in the bulk amount of genetic material can increase cell size, the impact of gene dosage multiplication on the metabolome remains largely unknown.

METHODS

We used untargeted metabolomics on four genetically distinct diploid-neoautotetraploid pairs of the greater duckweed, Spirodela polyrhiza, to investigate how WGD affects metabolite abundances per cell and per biomass.

RESULTS

Autopolyploidy increased metabolite levels per cell, but the response of individual metabolites varied considerably. However, the impact on metabolite level per biomass was restricted because the increased cell size reduced the metabolite concentration per cell. Nevertheless, we detected both quantitative and qualitative effects of WGD on the metabolome. Many effects were strain-specific, but some were shared by all four strains.

CONCLUSIONS

The nature and impact of metabolic changes after WGD depended strongly on the genotype. Dosage effects have the potential to alter the plant metabolome qualitatively and quantitatively, but were largely balanced out by the reduction in metabolite concentration due to an increase in cell size in this species.

hybridexpress: an R/Bioconductor package for comparative transcriptomic analyses of hybrids and their progenitors

Hybridization, the process of crossing individuals from diverse genetic backgrounds, plays a pivotal role in evolution, biological invasiveness, and crop breeding. At the transcriptional level, hybridization often leads to complex nonadditive effects, presenting challenges for understanding its consequences. Although standard transcriptomic analyses exist to compare hybrids to their progenitors, such analyses have not been implemented in a software package, hindering reproducibility. We introduce hybridexpress, an R/Bioconductor package designed to facilitate the analysis, visualization, and comparison of gene expression patterns in hybrid triplets (hybrids and their progenitors). hybridexpress provides users with a user-friendly and comprehensive workflow that includes all standard comparative analyses steps, including data normalization, calculation of midparent expression values, sample clustering, expression-based gene classification into categories and classes, and overrepresentation analysis for functional terms. We illustrate the utility of hybridexpress through comparative transcriptomic analyses of cotton allopolyploidization and rice root trait heterosis. hybridexpress is designed to streamline comparative transcriptomic studies of hybrid triplets, advancing our understanding of evolutionary dynamics in allopolyploids, and enhancing plant breeding strategies. hybridexpress is freely accessible from Bioconductor (https://bioconductor.org/packages/HybridExpress) and its source code is available on GitHub (https://github.com/almeidasilvaf/HybridExpress).

Evolutionary Dynamics of Chromatin Structure and Duplicate Gene Expression in Diploid and Allopolyploid Cotton

Polyploidy is a prominent mechanism of plant speciation and adaptation, yet the mechanistic understandings of duplicated gene regulation remain elusive. Chromatin structure dynamics are suggested to govern gene regulatory control. Here, we characterized genome-wide nucleosome organization and chromatin accessibility in allotetraploid cotton, Gossypium hirsutum (AADD, 2n = 4X = 52), relative to its two diploid parents (AA or DD genome) and their synthetic diploid hybrid (AD), using DNS-seq. The larger A-genome exhibited wider average nucleosome spacing in diploids, and this intergenomic difference diminished in the allopolyploid but not hybrid. Allopolyploidization also exhibited increased accessibility at promoters genome-wide and synchronized cis-regulatory motifs between subgenomes. A prominent cis-acting control was inferred for chromatin dynamics and demonstrated by transposable element removal from promoters. Linking accessibility to gene expression patterns, we found distinct regulatory effects for hybridization and later allopolyploid stages, including nuanced establishment of homoeolog expression bias and expression level dominance. Histone gene expression and nucleosome organization are coordinated through chromatin accessibility. Our study demonstrates the capability to track high-resolution chromatin structure dynamics and reveals their role in the evolution of cis-regulatory landscapes and duplicate gene expression in polyploids, illuminating regulatory ties to subgenomic asymmetry and dominance.

Novel Tri-Segmented Rhabdoviruses: A Data Mining Expedition Unveils the Cryptic Diversity of Cytorhabdoviruses

Cytorhabdoviruses (genus Cytorhabdovirus, family Rhabdoviridae) are plant-infecting viruses with enveloped, bacilliform virions. Established members of the genus Cytorhabdovirus have unsegmented single-stranded negative-sense RNA genomes (ca. 10-16 kb) which encode four to ten proteins. Here, by exploring large publicly available metatranscriptomics datasets, we report the identification and genomic characterization of 93 novel viruses with genetic and evolutionary cues of cytorhabdoviruses. Strikingly, five unprecedented viruses with tri-segmented genomes were also identified. This finding represents the first tri-segmented viruses in the family Rhabdoviridae, and they should be classified in a novel genus within this family for which we suggest the name "Trirhavirus". Interestingly, the nucleocapsid and polymerase were the only typical rhabdoviral proteins encoded by those tri-segmented viruses, whereas in three of them, a protein similar to the emaravirus (family Fimoviridae) silencing suppressor was found, while the other predicted proteins had no matches in any sequence databases. Genetic distance and evolutionary insights suggest that all these novel viruses may represent members of novel species. Phylogenetic analyses, of both novel and previously classified plant rhabdoviruses, provide compelling support for the division of the genus Cytorhabdovirus into three distinct genera. This proposed reclassification not only enhances our understanding of the evolutionary dynamics within this group of plant rhabdoviruses but also illuminates the remarkable genomic diversity they encompass. This study not only represents a significant expansion of the genomics of cytorhabdoviruses that will enable future research on the evolutionary peculiarity of this genus but also shows the plasticity in the rhabdovirus genome organization with the discovery of tri-segmented members with a unique evolutionary trajectory.

Effects of polyploidization and their evolutionary implications are revealed by heritable polyploidy in the haplodiploid wasp Nasonia vitripennis

Recurrent polyploidization occurred in the evolutionary history of most Eukaryota. However, how neopolyploid detriment (sterility, gigantism, gene dosage imbalances) has been overcome and even been bridged to evolutionary advantage (gene network diversification, mass radiation, range expansion) is largely unknown, particularly for animals. We used the parasitoid wasp Nasonia vitripennis, a rare insect system with heritable polyploidy, to begin addressing this knowledge gap. In Hymenoptera the sexes have different ploidies (haploid males, diploid females) and neopolyploids (diploid males, triploid females) occur for various species. Although such polyploids are usually sterile, those of N. vitripennis are reproductively capable and can even establish stable polyploid lines. To assess the effects of polyploidization, we compared a long-established polyploid line, the Whiting polyploid line (WPL) and a newly generated transformer knockdown line (tKDL) for fitness traits, absolute gene expression, and cell size and number. WPL polyploids have high male fitness and low female fecundity, while tKDL polyploids have poor male mate competition ability and high fertility. WPL has larger cells and cell number reduction, but the tKDL does not differ in this respect. Expression analyses of two housekeeping genes indicated that gene dosage is linked to sex irrespective of ploidy. Our study suggests that polyploid phenotypic variation may explain why some polyploid lineages thrive and others die out; a commonly proposed but difficult-to-test hypothesis. This documentation of diploid males (tKDL) with impaired competitive mating ability; triploid females with high fitness variation; and hymenopteran sexual dosage compensation (despite the lack of sex chromosomes) all challenges general assumptions on hymenopteran biology. We conclude that polyploidization is dependent on the duplicated genome characteristics and that genomes of different lines are unequally suited to survive diploidization. These results demonstrate the utility of N. vitripennis for delineating mechanisms of animal polyploid evolution, analogous to more advanced polyploid plant models.

Prediction of transcript structure and concentration using RNA-Seq data

Alternative splicing (AS) is a key post-transcriptional modification that helps in increasing protein diversity. Almost 90% of the protein-coding genes in humans are known to undergo AS and code for different transcripts. Some transcripts are associated with diseases such as breast cancer, lung cancer and glioblastoma. Hence, these transcripts can serve as novel therapeutic and prognostic targets for drug discovery. Herein, we have developed a pipeline, Finding Alternative Splicing Events (FASE), as the R package that includes modules to determine the structure and concentration of transcripts using differential AS. To predict the correct structure of expressed transcripts in given conditions, FASE combines the AS events with the information of exons, introns and junctions using graph theory. The estimated concentration of predicted transcripts is reported as the relative expression in terms of log2CPM. Using FASE, we were able to identify several unique transcripts of EMILIN1 and SLK genes in the TCGA-BRCA data, which were validated using RT-PCR. The experimental study demonstrated consistent results, which signify the high accuracy and precision of the developed methods. In conclusion, the developed pipeline, FASE, can efficiently predict novel transcripts that are missed in general transcript-level differential expression analysis. It can be applied selectively from a single gene to simple or complex genome even in multiple experimental conditions for the identification of differential AS-based biomarkers, prognostic targets and novel therapeutics.

Beyond Transcript Concentrations: Quantifying Polyploid Expression Responses per Biomass, per Genome, and per Cell with RNA-Seq

RNA-seq has been used extensively to study expression responses to polyploidy. Most current methods for normalizing RNA-seq data yield estimates of transcript concentrations (transcripts per transcriptome). The implicit assumption of these normalization methods is that transcriptome size is equivalent between the samples being compared such that transcript concentrations are equivalent to transcripts per cell. In recent years, however, evidence has mounted that transcriptome size can vary dramatically in response to a range of factors including polyploidy and that such variation is ubiquitous. Where such variation exists, transcript concentration is often a poor or even misleading proxy for expression responses at other biologically relevant scales (e.g., expression per cell). Thus, it is important that transcriptomic studies of polyploids move beyond simply comparing transcript concentrations if we are to gain a complete understanding of how genome multiplication affects gene expression. I discuss this issue in more detail and summarize a suite of approaches that can leverage RNA-seq to quantify expression responses per genome, per cell, and per unit of biomass.

Expression pattern of resynthesized allotetraploid Capsella is determined by hybridization, not whole-genome duplication

Polyploidization, the process leading to the increase in chromosome sets, is a major evolutionary transition in plants. Whole-genome duplication (WGD) within the same species gives rise to autopolyploids, whereas allopolyploids result from a compound process with two distinct components: WGD and interspecific hybridization. To dissect the instant effects of WGD and hybridization on gene expression and phenotype, we created a series of synthetic hybrid and polyploid Capsella plants, including diploid hybrids, autotetraploids of both parental species, and two kinds of resynthesized allotetraploids with different orders of WGD and hybridization. Hybridization played a major role in shaping the relative expression pattern of the neo-allopolyploids, whereas WGD had almost no immediate effect on relative gene expression pattern but, nonetheless, still affected phenotypes. No transposable element-mediated genomic shock scenario was observed in either neo-hybrids or neo-polyploids. Finally, WGD and hybridization interacted and the distorting effects of WGD were less strong in hybrids. Whole-genome duplication may even improve hybrid fertility. In summary, while the initial relative gene expression pattern in neo-allotetraploids was almost entirely determined by hybridization, WGD only had trivial effects on relative expression patterns, both processes interacted and had a strong impact on physical attributes and meiotic behaviors.

Organellar transcripts dominate the cellular mRNA pool across plants of varying ploidy levels

Mitochondrial and plastid functions depend on coordinated expression of proteins encoded by genomic compartments that have radical differences in copy number of organellar and nuclear genomes. In polyploids, doubling of the nuclear genome may add challenges to maintaining balanced expression of proteins involved in cytonuclear interactions. Here, we use ribo-depleted RNA sequencing (RNA-seq) to analyze transcript abundance for nuclear and organellar genomes in leaf tissue from four different polyploid angiosperms and their close diploid relatives. We find that even though plastid genomes contain <1% of the number of genes in the nuclear genome, they generate the majority (69.9 to 82.3%) of messenger RNA (mRNA) transcripts in the cell. Mitochondrial genes are responsible for a much smaller percentage (1.3 to 3.7%) of the leaf mRNA pool but still produce much higher transcript abundances per gene compared to nuclear genome. Nuclear genes encoding proteins that functionally interact with mitochondrial or plastid gene products exhibit mRNA expression levels that are consistently more than 10-fold lower than their organellar counterparts, indicating an extreme cytonuclear imbalance at the RNA level despite the predominance of equimolar interactions at the protein level. Nevertheless, interacting nuclear and organellar genes show strongly correlated transcript abundances across functional categories, suggesting that the observed mRNA stoichiometric imbalance does not preclude coordination of cytonuclear expression. Finally, we show that nuclear genome doubling does not alter the cytonuclear expression ratios observed in diploid relatives in consistent or systematic ways, indicating that successful polyploid plants are able to compensate for cytonuclear perturbations associated with nuclear genome doubling.

Ploidy and local environment drive intraspecific variation in endoreduplication in Arabidopsis arenosa

PREMISE

Endoreduplication, nonheritable duplication of a nuclear genome, is widespread in plants and plays a role in developmental processes related to cell differentiation. However, neither ecological nor cytological factors influencing intraspecific variation in endoreduplication are fully understood.

METHODS

We cultivated plants covering the range-wide natural diversity of diploid and tetraploid populations of Arabidopsis arenosa in common conditions to investigate the effect of original ploidy level on endoreduplication. We also raised plants from several foothill and alpine populations from different lineages and of both ploidies to test for the effect of elevation. We determined the endoreduplication level in leaves of young plants by flow cytometry. Using RNA-seq data available for our populations, we analyzed gene expression analysis in individuals that differed in endoreduplication level.

RESULTS

We found intraspecific variation in endoreduplication that was mainly driven by the original ploidy level of populations, with significantly higher endoreduplication in diploids. An effect of elevation was also found within each ploidy, yet its direction exhibited rather regional-specific patterns. Transcriptomic analysis comparing individuals with high vs. low endopolyploidy revealed a majority of differentially expressed genes related to the stress and hormone response and to modifications especially in the cell wall and in chloroplasts.

CONCLUSIONS

Our results support the general assumption of higher potential of low-ploidy organisms to undergo endoreduplication and suggest that endoreduplication is further integrated within the stress response pathways for a fine-tune adjustment of the endoreduplication process to their local environment.

Evolutionary divergence in embryo and seed coat development of U's Triangle Brassica species illustrated by a spatiotemporal transcriptome atlas

The economically valuable Brassica species include the six related members of U's Triangle. Despite the agronomic and economic importance of these Brassicas, the impacts of evolution and relatively recent domestication events on the genetic landscape of seed development have not been comprehensively examined in these species. Here we present a 3D transcriptome atlas for the six species of U's Triangle, producing a unique resource that captures gene expression data for the major subcompartments of the seed, from the unfertilized ovule to the mature embryo and seed coat. This comprehensive dataset for seed development in tetraploid and ancestral diploid Brassicas provides new insights into evolutionary divergence and expression bias at the gene and subgenome levels during the domestication of these valued crop species. Comparisons of gene expression associated with regulatory networks and metabolic pathways operating in the embryo and seed coat during seed development reveal differences in storage reserve accumulation and fatty acid metabolism among the six Brassica species. This study illustrates the genetic underpinnings of seed traits and the selective pressures placed on seed production, providing an immense resource for continued investigation of Brassica polyploid biology, genomics and evolution.

DNA Methylome and LncRNAome Analysis Provide Insights Into Mechanisms of Genome-Dosage Effects in Autotetraploid Cassava

Whole genome duplication (WGD) increases the dosage of all coding and non-coding genes, yet the molecular implications of genome-dosage effects remain elusive. In this study, we generated integrated maps of the methylomes and lncRNAomes for diploid and artificially generated autotetraploid cassava (Manihot esculenta Crantz). We found that transposable elements (TEs) suppressed adjacent protein coding gene (PCG)-expression levels, while TEs activated the expression of nearby long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) in the cassava genome. The hypermethylation of DNA transposons in mCG and mCHH sites may be an effective way to suppress the expression of nearby PCGs in autotetraploid cassava, resulting in similar expression levels for most of PCGs between autotetraploid and diploid cassava. In the autotetraploid, decreased methylation levels of retrotransposons at mCHG and mCHH sites contributed to reduced methylation of Gypsy-neighboring long intergenic non-coding RNAs, potentially preserving diploid-like expression patterns in the major of lncRNAs. Collectively, our study highlighted that WGD-induced DNA methylation variation in DNA transposons and retrotransposons may be as direct adaptive responses to dosage of all coding-genes and lncRNAs, respectively.

Consequences of whole genome duplication for 2n pollen performance

The vegetative cell of the angiosperm male gametophyte (pollen) functions as a free-living, single-celled organism that both produces and transports sperm to egg. Whole-genome duplication (WGD) should have strong effects on pollen because of the haploid to diploid transition and because of both genetic and epigenetic effects on cell-level phenotypes. To disentangle historical effects of WGD on pollen performance, studies can compare 1n pollen from diploids to neo-2n pollen from diploids and synthetic autotetraploids to older 2n pollen from established neo-autotetraploids. WGD doubles both gene number and bulk nuclear DNA mass, and a substantial proportion of diploid and autotetraploid heterozygosity can be transmitted to 2n pollen. Relative to 1n pollen, 2n pollen can exhibit heterosis due to higher gene dosage, higher heterozygosity and new allelic interactions. Doubled genome size also has consequences for gene regulation and expression as well as epigenetic effects on cell architecture. Pollen volume doubling is a universal effect of WGD, whereas an increase in aperture number is common among taxa with simultaneous microsporogenesis and pored apertures, mostly eudicots. WGD instantly affects numerous evolved compromises among mature pollen functional traits and these are rapidly shaped by highly diverse tissue interactions and pollen competitive environments in the early post-WGD generations. 2n pollen phenotypes generally incur higher performance costs, and the degree to which these are met or evolve by scaling up provisioning and metabolic vigor needs further study.

Plasmodium Reproduction, Cell Size, and Transcription: How to Cope With Increasing DNA Content?

Plasmodium, the unicellular parasite that causes malaria, evolved a highly unusual mode of reproduction. During its complex life cycle, invasive or transmissive stages alternate with proliferating stages, where a single parasite can produce tens of thousands of progeny. In the clinically relevant blood stage of infection, the parasite replicates its genome up to thirty times and forms a multinucleated cell before daughter cells are assembled. Thus, within a single cell cycle, Plasmodium develops from a haploid to a polypoid cell, harboring multiple copies of its genome. Polyploidy creates several biological challenges, such as imbalances in genome output, and cells can respond to this by changing their size and/or alter the production of RNA species and protein to achieve expression homeostasis. However, the effects and possible adaptations of Plasmodium to the massively increasing DNA content are unknown. Here, we revisit and embed current Plasmodium literature in the context of polyploidy and propose potential mechanisms of the parasite to cope with the increasing gene dosage.

Gene and Transposable Element Expression Evolution Following Recent and Past Polyploidy Events in Spartina (Poaceae)

Gene expression dynamics is a key component of polyploid evolution, varying in nature, intensity, and temporal scales, most particularly in allopolyploids, where two or more sub-genomes from differentiated parental species and different repeat contents are merged. Here, we investigated transcriptome evolution at different evolutionary time scales among tetraploid, hexaploid, and neododecaploid Spartina species (Poaceae, Chloridoideae) that successively diverged in the last 6-10 my, at the origin of differential phenotypic and ecological traits. Of particular interest are the recent (19th century) hybridizations between the two hexaploids Spartina alterniflora (2n = 6x = 62) and S. maritima (2n = 6x = 60) that resulted in two sterile F1 hybrids: Spartina × townsendii (2n = 6x = 62) in England and Spartina × neyrautii (2n = 6x = 62) in France. Whole genome duplication of S. × townsendii gave rise to the invasive neo-allododecaploid species Spartina anglica (2n = 12x = 124). New transcriptome assemblies and annotations for tetraploids and the enrichment of previously published reference transcriptomes for hexaploids and the allododecaploid allowed identifying 42,423 clusters of orthologs and distinguishing 21 transcribed transposable element (TE) lineages across the seven investigated Spartina species. In 4x and 6x mesopolyploids, gene and TE expression changes were consistent with phylogenetic relationships and divergence, revealing weak expression differences in the tetraploid sister species Spartina bakeri and Spartina versicolor (<2 my divergence time) compared to marked transcriptome divergence between the hexaploids S. alterniflora and S. maritima that diverged 2-4 mya. Differentially expressed genes were involved in glycolysis, post-transcriptional protein modifications, epidermis development, biosynthesis of carotenoids. Most detected TE lineages (except SINE elements) were found more expressed in hexaploids than in tetraploids, in line with their abundance in the corresponding genomes. Comparatively, an astonishing (52%) expression repatterning and deviation from parental additivity were observed following recent reticulate evolution (involving the F1 hybrids and the neo-allododecaploid S. anglica), with various patterns of biased homoeologous gene expression, including genes involved in epigenetic regulation. Downregulation of TEs was observed in both hybrids and accentuated in the neo-allopolyploid. Our results reinforce the view that allopolyploidy represents springboards to new regulatory patterns, offering to worldwide invasive species, such as S. anglica, the opportunity to colonize stressful and fluctuating environments on saltmarshes.

Polyploidy: an evolutionary and ecological force in stressful times

Polyploidy has been hypothesized to be both an evolutionary dead-end and a source for evolutionary innovation and species diversification. Although polyploid organisms, especially plants, abound, the apparent nonrandom long-term establishment of genome duplications suggests a link with environmental conditions. Whole-genome duplications seem to correlate with periods of extinction or global change, while polyploids often thrive in harsh or disturbed environments. Evidence is also accumulating that biotic interactions, for instance, with pathogens or mutualists, affect polyploids differently than nonpolyploids. Here, we review recent findings and insights on the effect of both abiotic and biotic stress on polyploids versus nonpolyploids and propose that stress response in general is an important and even determining factor in the establishment and success of polyploidy.

Pilot RNA-seq data from 24 species of vascular plants at Harvard Forest

PREMISE

Large-scale projects such as the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) collect ecological data on entire biomes to track climate change. NEON provides an opportunity to launch community transcriptomic projects that ask integrative questions in ecology and evolution. We conducted a pilot study to investigate the challenges of collecting RNA-seq data from diverse plant communities.

METHODS

We generated >650 Gbp of RNA-seq for 24 vascular plant species representing 12 genera and nine families at the Harvard Forest NEON site. Each species was sampled twice in 2016 (July and August). We assessed transcriptome quality and content with TransRate, BUSCO, and Gene Ontology annotations.

RESULTS

Only modest differences in assembly quality were observed across multiple k-mers. On average, transcriptomes contained hits to >70% of loci in the BUSCO database. We found no significant difference in the number of assembled and annotated transcripts between diploid and polyploid transcriptomes.

DISCUSSION

We provide new RNA-seq data sets for 24 species of vascular plants in Harvard Forest. Challenges associated with this type of study included recovery of high-quality RNA from diverse species and access to NEON sites for genomic sampling. Overcoming these challenges offers opportunities for large-scale studies at the intersection of ecology and genomics.

Balanced Genome Triplication in Wheat Causes Premature Growth Arrest and an Upheaval of Genome-Wide Gene Regulation

Polyploidy, or whole genome duplication (WGD), is a driving evolutionary force across the tree of life and has played a pervasive role in the evolution of the plant kingdom. It is generally believed that a major genetic attribute contributing to the success of polyploidy is increased gene and genome dosage. The evolution of polyploid wheat has lent support to this scenario. Wheat has evolved at three ploidal levels: diploidy, tetraploidy, and hexaploidy. Ample evidence testifies that the evolutionary success, be it with respect to evolvability, natural adaptability, or domestication has dramatically increased with each elevation of the ploidal levels. A long-standing question is what would be the outcome if a further elevation of ploidy is superimposed on hexaploid wheat? Here, we characterized a spontaneously occurring nonaploid wheat individual in selfed progenies of synthetic hexaploid wheat and compared it with its isogenic hexaploid siblings at the phenotypic, cytological, and genome-wide gene-expression levels. The nonaploid manifested severe defects in growth and development, albeit with a balanced triplication of the three wheat subgenomes. Transcriptomic profiling of the second leaf of nonaploid, taken at a stage when phenotypic abnormality was not yet discernible, already revealed significant dysregulation in global-scale gene expression with ca. 25.2% of the 49,436 expressed genes being differentially expressed genes (DEGs) at a twofold change cutoff relative to the hexaploid counterpart. Both up- and downregulated DEGs were identified in the nonaploid vs. hexaploid, including 457 genes showing qualitative alteration, i.e., silencing or activation. Impaired functionality at both cellular and organismal levels was inferred from gene ontology analysis of the DEGs. Homoeologous expression analysis of 9,574 sets of syntenic triads indicated that, compared with hexaploid, the proportions showing various homeologous expression patterns were highly conserved in the nonaploid although gene identity showed moderate reshuffling among some of the patterns in the nonaploid. Together, our results suggest hexaploidy is likely the upper limit of ploidy level in wheat; crossing this threshold incurs severe ploidy syndrome that is preceded by disruptive dysregulation of global gene expression.

The effects of hybridization and genome doubling in plant evolution via allopolyploidy

Polyploidy is a pervasive and recurring phenomenon across the tree of life, which occurred at variable time scales, ecological amplitudes and cell types, and is especially prominent in the evolutionary histories of plants. Importantly, many of the world's most important crops and noxious invasive weeds are recent polyploids. Polyploidy includes two major types, autopolyploidy, referring to doubling of a single species genome, and allopolyploidy referring to doubling of two or more merged genomes via biological hybridization of distinct but related species. The prevalence of both types of polyploidy implies that both genome doubling alone and doubling coupled with hybridization confer selective advantages over their diploid progenitors under specific circumstances. In cases of allopolyploidy, the two events, genome doubling and hybridization, have both advantages and disadvantages. Accumulated studies have established that, in allopolyploidy, some advantage(s) of doubling may compensate for the disadvantage(s) of hybridity and vice versa, although further study is required to validate generality of this trend. Some studies have also revealed a variety of non-Mendelian genetic and genomic consequences induced by doubling and hybridization separately or concertedly in nascent allopolyploidy; however, the significance of which to the immediate establishment and longer-term evolutionary success of allopolyploid species remain to be empirically demonstrated and ecologically investigated. This review aims to summarize recent advances in our understanding of the roles of hybridization and genome doubling, in separation and combination, in the evolution of allopolyploid genomes, as well as fruitful future research directions that are emerging from these studies.

Gene Balance Predicts Transcriptional Responses Immediately Following Ploidy Change in Arabidopsis thaliana

The gene balance hypothesis postulates that there is selection on gene copy number (gene dosage) to preserve the stoichiometric balance among interacting proteins. This presupposes that gene product abundance is governed by gene dosage and that gene dosage responses are consistent for interacting genes in a dosage-balance-sensitive network or complex. Gene dosage responses, however, have rarely been quantified, and the available data suggest that they are highly variable. We sequenced the transcriptomes of two synthetic autopolyploid accessions of Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana) and their diploid progenitors, as well as one natural tetraploid and its synthetic diploid produced via haploid induction, to estimate transcriptome size and dosage responses immediately following ploidy change. Similar to what has been observed in previous studies, overall transcriptome size does not exhibit a simple doubling in response to genome doubling, and individual gene dosage responses are highly variable in all three accessions, indicating that expression is not strictly coupled with gene dosage. Nonetheless, putatively dosage balance-sensitive gene groups (Gene Ontology terms, metabolic networks, gene families, and predicted interacting proteins) exhibit smaller and more coordinated dosage responses than do putatively dosage-insensitive gene groups, suggesting that constraints on dosage balance operate immediately following whole-genome duplication and that duplicate gene retention patterns are shaped by selection to preserve dosage balance.

Robust Cytonuclear Coordination of Transcription in Nascent Arabidopsis thaliana Autopolyploids

Polyploidy is hypothesized to cause dosage imbalances between the nucleus and the other genome-containing organelles (mitochondria and plastids), but the evidence for this is limited. We performed RNA-seq on Arabidopsis thaliana diploids and their derived autopolyploids to quantify the degree of inter-genome coordination of transcriptional responses to nuclear whole genome duplication in two different organs (sepals and rosette leaves). We show that nuclear and organellar genomes exhibit highly coordinated responses in both organs. First, organelle genome copy number increased in response to nuclear whole genome duplication (WGD), at least partially compensating for altered nuclear genome dosage. Second, transcriptional output of the different cellular compartments is tuned to maintain diploid-like levels of relative expression among interacting genes. In particular, plastid genes and nuclear genes whose products are plastid-targeted show coordinated down-regulation, such that their expression levels relative to each other remain constant across ploidy levels. Conversely, mitochondrial genes and nuclear genes with mitochondrial targeting show either constant or coordinated up-regulation of expression relative to other nuclear genes. Thus, cytonuclear coordination is robust to changes in nuclear ploidy level, with diploid-like balance in transcript abundances achieved within three generations after nuclear whole genome duplication.