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ToolsWorthington, Margaret, Perez, Juan Guillermo, Mussurova, Saule, Silva-Cordoba, Alexander, Castiblanco, Valheria, Cardoso Arango, Juan Andres, Jones, Charlotte, Fernandez-Fuentes, Narcis, Skot, Leif, Dyer, Sarah, Tohme, Joe, DI Palma, Federica, Arango, Jacobo, Armstead, Ian and De Vega, Jose J. (2021) A new genome allows the identification of genes associated with natural variation in aluminium tolerance in Brachiaria grasses. Journal of Experimental Botany, 72 (2). pp. 302-319. ISSN 0022-0957
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Abstract
Toxic concentrations of aluminium cations and low phosphorus availability are the main yield-limiting factors in acidic soils, which represent half of the potentially available arable land. Brachiaria grasses, which are commonly sown as forage in the tropics because of their resilience and low demand for nutrients, show greater tolerance to high concentrations of aluminium cations (Al3+) than most other grass crops. In this work, we explored the natural variation in tolerance to Al3+ between high and low tolerant Brachiaria species and characterized their transcriptional differences during stress. We identified three QTLs (quantitative trait loci) associated with root vigour during Al3+ stress in their hybrid progeny. By integrating these results with a new Brachiaria reference genome, we identified 30 genes putatively responsible for Al3+ tolerance in Brachiaria. We observed differential expression during stress of genes involved in RNA translation, response signalling, cell wall composition, and vesicle location homologous to aluminium-induced proteins involved in limiting uptake or localizing the toxin. However, there was limited regulation of malate transporters in Brachiaria, which suggests that exudation of organic acids and other external tolerance mechanisms, common in other grasses, might not be relevant in Brachiaria. The contrasting regulation of RNA translation and response signalling suggests that response timing is critical in high Al3+-tolerant Brachiaria.
| Item Type: | Article |
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| Additional Information: | Data availability: Raw reads are deposited in SRA under accession PRJNA437375. The genome assembly is deposited at the NCBI with accession no. GCA_003016355 (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/assembly/1650221). Individual scaffolds can be accessed at NCBI’s GenBank accession nos PVZT01000001–PVZT01102577. Additional datasets S1–S10, which contain the genome assembly, chromosomal anchoring in AGP format, gene models, position and function annotations, and enrichment analysis of Gene Ontology terms can be downloaded as individual files from Zenodo (http://dx.doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3941963. Funding information: This work was partially funded by a Biotechnology and Biology Sciences Research Council (BBSRC)’s Global Challenge Research Fund BB/P028098/1 and a BBSRC’s Newton Fund Postdoctoral Twinning Award BBS/OS/NW/000011. |
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | acid soils,aluminium tolerance,brachiaria,differential expression,genome assembly,grass,qtl mapping,urochloa,physiology,plant science ,/dk/atira/pure/subjectarea/asjc/1300/1314 |
| Faculty \ School: | Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences > Norwich Medical School Faculty of Science > School of Biological Sciences |
| Related URLs: | |
| Depositing User: | LivePure Connector |
| Date Deposited: | 21 Aug 2025 15:30 |
| Last Modified: | 21 Aug 2025 15:30 |
| URI: | https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/100205 |
| DOI: | 10.1093/jxb/eraa469 |
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