A systems biology model of the regulatory network in Populus leaves reveals interacting regulators and conserved regulation

Leaf shape in Populus tremula is a complex, omnigenic trait

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.

Predicting Thermal Adaptation by Looking Into Populations' Genomic Past

Molecular evolution offers an insightful theory to interpret the genomic consequences of thermal adaptation to previous events of climate change beyond range shifts. However, disentangling often mixed footprints of selective and demographic processes from those due to lineage sorting, recombination rate variation, and genomic constrains is not trivial. Therefore, here we condense current and historical population genomic tools to study thermal adaptation and outline key developments (genomic prediction, machine learning) that might assist their utilization for improving forecasts of populations' responses to thermal variation. We start by summarizing how recent thermal-driven selective and demographic responses can be inferred by coalescent methods and in turn how quantitative genetic theory offers suitable multi-trait predictions over a few generations via the breeder's equation. We later assume that enough generations have passed as to display genomic signatures of divergent selection to thermal variation and describe how these footprints can be reconstructed using genome-wide association and selection scans or, alternatively, may be used for forward prediction over multiple generations under an infinitesimal genomic prediction model. Finally, we move deeper in time to comprehend the genomic consequences of thermal shifts at an evolutionary time scale by relying on phylogeographic approaches that allow for reticulate evolution and ecological parapatric speciation, and end by envisioning the potential of modern machine learning techniques to better inform long-term predictions. We conclude that foreseeing future thermal adaptive responses requires bridging the multiple spatial scales of historical and predictive environmental change research under modern cohesive approaches such as genomic prediction and machine learning frameworks.

Spatially resolved transcriptome profiling in model plant species

Understanding complex biological systems requires functional characterization of specialized tissue domains. However, existing strategies for generating and analysing high-throughput spatial expression profiles were developed for a limited range of organisms, primarily mammals. Here we present the first available approach to generate and study high-resolution, spatially resolved functional profiles in a broad range of model plant systems. Our process includes high-throughput spatial transcriptome profiling followed by spatial gene and pathway analyses. We first demonstrate the feasibility of the technique by generating spatial transcriptome profiles from model angiosperms and gymnosperms microsections. In Arabidopsis thaliana we use the spatial data to identify differences in expression levels of 141 genes and 189 pathways in eight inflorescence tissue domains. Our combined approach of spatial transcriptomics and functional profiling offers a powerful new strategy that can be applied to a broad range of plant species, and is an approach that will be pivotal to answering fundamental questions in developmental and evolutionary biology.

Tissue and cell-type co-expression networks of transcription factors and wood component genes in Populus trichocarpa

Co-expression networks based on transcriptomes of Populus trichocarpa major tissues and specific cell types suggest redundant control of cell wall component biosynthetic genes by transcription factors in wood formation. We analyzed the transcriptomes of five tissues (xylem, phloem, shoot, leaf, and root) and two wood forming cell types (fiber and vessel) of Populus trichocarpa to assemble gene co-expression subnetworks associated with wood formation. We identified 165 transcription factors (TFs) that showed xylem-, fiber-, and vessel-specific expression. Of these 165 TFs, 101 co-expressed (correlation coefficient, r > 0.7) with the 45 secondary cell wall cellulose, hemicellulose, and lignin biosynthetic genes. Each cell wall component gene co-expressed on average with 34 TFs, suggesting redundant control of the cell wall component gene expression. Co-expression analysis showed that the 101 TFs and the 45 cell wall component genes each has two distinct groups (groups 1 and 2), based on their co-expression patterns. The group 1 TFs (44 members) are predominantly xylem and fiber specific, and are all highly positively co-expressed with the group 1 cell wall component genes (30 members), suggesting their roles as major wood formation regulators. Group 1 TFs include a lateral organ boundary domain gene (LBD) that has the highest number of positively correlated cell wall component genes (36) and TFs (47). The group 2 TFs have 57 members, including 14 vessel-specific TFs, and are generally less correlated with the cell wall component genes. An exception is a vessel-specific basic helix-loop-helix (bHLH) gene that negatively correlates with 20 cell wall component genes, and may function as a key transcriptional suppressor. The co-expression networks revealed here suggest a well-structured transcriptional homeostasis for cell wall component biosynthesis during wood formation.

Drought response transcriptomes are altered in poplar with reduced tonoplast sucrose transporter expression

Transgenic Populus tremula x alba (717-1B4) plants with reduced expression of a tonoplast sucrose efflux transporter, PtaSUT4, exhibit reduced shoot growth compared to wild type (WT) under sustained mild drought. The present study was undertaken to determine whether SUT4-RNAi directly or indirectly altered poplar predisposition and/or response to changes in soil water availability. While sucrose and hexose levels were constitutively elevated in shoot organs, expression responses to drought were most altered in the root tips of SUT4-RNAi plants. Prior to any drought treatment, constitutively elevated transcript levels of abscisic acid biosynthetic genes and bark/vegetative storage proteins suggested altered metabolism in root tips of RNAi plants. Stronger drought-stimulation of stress-inducible genes encoding late-embryogenesis-abundant proteins in transgenic roots was consistent with increased vulnerability to soil drying. Transcript evidence suggested an RNAi effect on intercellular water trafficking by aquaporins in stem xylem during soil drying and recovery. Co-expression network analysis predicted altered integration of abscisic acid sensing/signaling with ethylene and jasmonate sensing/signaling in RNAi compared to WT roots. The overall conclusion is that steepened shoot-root sugar gradient in RNAi plants increased sensitivity of root tips to decreasing soil water availability.

Microtubules in Plant Cells: Strategies and Methods for Immunofluorescence, Transmission Electron Microscopy, and Live Cell Imaging

Microtubules (MTs) are required throughout plant development for a wide variety of processes, and different strategies have evolved to visualize and analyze them. This chapter provides specific methods that can be used to analyze microtubule organization and dynamic properties in plant systems and summarizes the advantages and limitations for each technique. We outline basic methods for preparing samples for immunofluorescence labeling, including an enzyme-based permeabilization method, and a freeze-shattering method, which generates microfractures in the cell wall to provide antibodies access to cells in cuticle-laden aerial organs such as leaves. We discuss current options for live cell imaging of MTs with fluorescently tagged proteins (FPs), and provide chemical fixation, high-pressure freezing/freeze substitution, and post-fixation staining protocols for preserving MTs for transmission electron microscopy and tomography.

Quantitative assessment of gene expression network module-validation methods

Validation of pluripotent modules in diverse networks holds enormous potential for systems biology and network pharmacology. An arising challenge is how to assess the accuracy of discovering all potential modules from multi-omic networks and validating their architectural characteristics based on innovative computational methods beyond function enrichment and biological validation. To display the framework progress in this domain, we systematically divided the existing Computational Validation Approaches based on Modular Architecture (CVAMA) into topology-based approaches (TBA) and statistics-based approaches (SBA). We compared the available module validation methods based on 11 gene expression datasets, and partially consistent results in the form of homogeneous models were obtained with each individual approach, whereas discrepant contradictory results were found between TBA and SBA. The TBA of the Zsummary value had a higher Validation Success Ratio (VSR) (51%) and a higher Fluctuation Ratio (FR) (80.92%), whereas the SBA of the approximately unbiased (AU) p-value had a lower VSR (12.3%) and a lower FR (45.84%). The Gray area simulated study revealed a consistent result for these two models and indicated a lower Variation Ratio (VR) (8.10%) of TBA at 6 simulated levels. Despite facing many novel challenges and evidence limitations, CVAMA may offer novel insights into modular networks.

Arabidopsis ensemble reverse-engineered gene regulatory network discloses interconnected transcription factors in oxidative stress

The abiotic stress response in plants is complex and tightly controlled by gene regulation. We present an abiotic stress gene regulatory network of 200,014 interactions for 11,938 target genes by integrating four complementary reverse-engineering solutions through average rank aggregation on an Arabidopsis thaliana microarray expression compendium. This ensemble performed the most robustly in benchmarking and greatly expands upon the availability of interactions currently reported. Besides recovering 1182 known regulatory interactions, cis-regulatory motifs and coherent functionalities of target genes corresponded with the predicted transcription factors. We provide a valuable resource of 572 abiotic stress modules of coregulated genes with functional and regulatory information, from which we deduced functional relationships for 1966 uncharacterized genes and many regulators. Using gain- and loss-of-function mutants of seven transcription factors grown under control and salt stress conditions, we experimentally validated 141 out of 271 predictions (52% precision) for 102 selected genes and mapped 148 additional transcription factor-gene regulatory interactions (49% recall). We identified an intricate core oxidative stress regulatory network where NAC13, NAC053, ERF6, WRKY6, and NAC032 transcription factors interconnect and function in detoxification. Our work shows that ensemble reverse-engineering can generate robust biological hypotheses of gene regulation in a multicellular eukaryote that can be tested by medium-throughput experimental validation.

Studying the complex expression dependences between sets of coexpressed genes

Organisms simplify the orchestration of gene expression by coregulating genes whose products function together in the cell. The use of clustering methods to obtain sets of coexpressed genes from expression arrays is very common; nevertheless there are no appropriate tools to study the expression networks among these sets of coexpressed genes. The aim of the developed tools is to allow studying the complex expression dependences that exist between sets of coexpressed genes. For this purpose, we start detecting the nonlinear expression relationships between pairs of genes, plus the coexpressed genes. Next, we form networks among sets of coexpressed genes that maintain nonlinear expression dependences between all of them. The expression relationship between the sets of coexpressed genes is defined by the expression relationship between the skeletons of these sets, where this skeleton represents the coexpressed genes with a well-defined nonlinear expression relationship with the skeleton of the other sets. As a result, we can study the nonlinear expression relationships between a target gene and other sets of coexpressed genes, or start the study from the skeleton of the sets, to study the complex relationships of activation and deactivation between the sets of coexpressed genes that carry out the different cellular processes present in the expression experiments.

Evaluation of experimental design and computational parameter choices affecting analyses of ChIP-seq and RNA-seq data in undomesticated poplar trees

Background

One of the great advantages of next generation sequencing is the ability to generate large genomic datasets for virtually all species, including non-model organisms. It should be possible, in turn, to apply advanced computational approaches to these datasets to develop models of biological processes. In a practical sense, working with non-model organisms presents unique challenges. In this paper we discuss some of these challenges for ChIP-seq and RNA-seq experiments using the undomesticated tree species of the genus Populus.

Results

We describe specific challenges associated with experimental design in Populus, including selection of optimal genotypes for different technical approaches and development of antibodies against Populus transcription factors. Execution of the experimental design included the generation and analysis of Chromatin immunoprecipitation-sequencing (ChIP-seq) data for RNA polymerase II and transcription factors involved in wood formation. We discuss criteria for analyzing the resulting datasets, determination of appropriate control sequencing libraries, evaluation of sequencing coverage needs, and optimization of parameters. We also describe the evaluation of ChIP-seq data from Populus, and discuss the comparison between ChIP-seq and RNA-seq data and biological interpretations of these comparisons.

Conclusions

These and other "lessons learned" highlight the challenges but also the potential insights to be gained from extending next generation sequencing-supported network analyses to undomesticated non-model species.

Modeling transcriptional networks regulating secondary growth and wood formation in forest trees

The complex interactions among the genes that underlie a biological process can be modeled and presented as a transcriptional network, in which genes (nodes) and their interactions (edges) are shown in a graphical form similar to a wiring diagram. A large number of genes have been identified that are expressed during the radial woody growth of tree stems (secondary growth), but a comprehensive understanding of how these genes interact to influence woody growth is currently lacking. Modeling transcriptional networks has recently been made tractable by next-generation sequencing-based technologies that can comprehensively catalog gene expression and transcription factor-binding genome-wide, but has not yet been extensively applied to undomesticated tree species or woody growth. Here we discuss basic features of transcriptional networks, approaches for modeling biological networks, and examples of biological network models developed for forest trees to date. We discuss how transcriptional network research is being developed in the model forest tree genus, Populus, and how this research area can be further developed and applied. Transcriptional network models for forest tree secondary growth and wood formation could ultimately provide new predictive models to accelerate hypothesis-driven research and develop new breeding applications.

ComPlEx: conservation and divergence of co-expression networks in A. thaliana, Populus and O. sativa

Background

Divergence in gene regulation has emerged as a key mechanism underlying species differentiation. Comparative analysis of co-expression networks across species can reveal conservation and divergence in the regulation of genes.

Results

We inferred co-expression networks of A. thaliana, Populus spp. and O. sativa using state-of-the-art methods based on mutual information and context likelihood of relatedness, and conducted a comprehensive comparison of these networks across a range of co-expression thresholds. In addition to quantifying gene-gene link and network neighbourhood conservation, we also applied recent advancements in network analysis to do cross-species comparisons of network properties such as scale free characteristics and gene centrality as well as network motifs. We found that in all species the networks emerged as scale free only above a certain co-expression threshold, and that the high-centrality genes upholding this organization tended to be conserved. Network motifs, in particular the feed-forward loop, were found to be significantly enriched in specific functional subnetworks but where much less conserved across species than gene centrality. Although individual gene-gene co-expression had massively diverged, up to ~80% of the genes still had a significantly conserved network neighbourhood. For genes with multiple predicted orthologs, about half had one ortholog with conserved regulation and another ortholog with diverged or non-conserved regulation. Furthermore, the most sequence similar ortholog was not the one with the most conserved gene regulation in over half of the cases.

Conclusions

We have provided a comprehensive analysis of gene regulation evolution in plants and built a web tool for Comparative analysis of Plant co-Expression networks (ComPlEx, http://complex.plantgenie.org/). The tool can be particularly useful for identifying the ortholog with the most conserved regulation among several sequence-similar alternatives and can thus be of practical importance in e.g. finding candidate genes for perturbation experiments.

The plant vascular system: evolution, development and functions

The emergence of the tracheophyte-based vascular system of land plants had major impacts on the evolution of terrestrial biology, in general, through its role in facilitating the development of plants with increased stature, photosynthetic output, and ability to colonize a greatly expanded range of environmental habitats. Recently, considerable progress has been made in terms of our understanding of the developmental and physiological programs involved in the formation and function of the plant vascular system. In this review, we first examine the evolutionary events that gave rise to the tracheophytes, followed by analysis of the genetic and hormonal networks that cooperate to orchestrate vascular development in the gymnosperms and angiosperms. The two essential functions performed by the vascular system, namely the delivery of resources (water, essential mineral nutrients, sugars and amino acids) to the various plant organs and provision of mechanical support are next discussed. Here, we focus on critical questions relating to structural and physiological properties controlling the delivery of material through the xylem and phloem. Recent discoveries into the role of the vascular system as an effective long-distance communication system are next assessed in terms of the coordination of developmental, physiological and defense-related processes, at the whole-plant level. A concerted effort has been made to integrate all these new findings into a comprehensive picture of the state-of-the-art in the area of plant vascular biology. Finally, areas important for future research are highlighted in terms of their likely contribution both to basic knowledge and applications to primary industry.

An Institutional Approach to Solar Fuels Research

This account gives a brief overview of various directions in current solar fuels research. On that basis, the necessity for an interdisciplinary approach is argued, and an institutional way for promoting this development is presented using the example of the Chemistry Biology Centre (KBC) at Umeå University in Sweden.

Prerequisites, performance and profits of transcriptional profiling the abiotic stress response

During the last decade, microarrays became a routine tool for the analysis of transcripts in the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana and the crop plant species rice, poplar or barley. The overwhelming amount of data generated by gene expression studies is a valuable resource for every scientist. Here, we summarize the most important findings about the abiotic stress responses in plants. Interestingly, conserved patterns of gene expression responses have been found that are common between different abiotic stresses or that are conserved between different plant species. However, the individual histories of each plant affect the inter-comparability between experiments already before the onset of the actual stress treatment. This review outlines multiple aspects of microarray technology and highlights some of the benefits, limitations and also pitfalls of the technique. This article is part of a Special Issue entitled: Plant gene regulation in response to abiotic stress.