Prediction of conserved and variable heat and cold stress response in maize using cis-regulatory information

Peng Zhou, Tara A. Enders, Zachary A. Myers, Erika Magnusson, Peter A. Crisp, Jaclyn M. Noshay, Fabio Gomez-Cano, Zhikai Liang, Erich Grotewold, Kathleen Greenham, Nathan M. Springer

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

29 Scopus citations

Abstract

Changes in gene expression are important for responses to abiotic stress. Transcriptome profiling of heat- or cold-stressed maize genotypes identifies many changes in transcript abundance. We used comparisons of expression responses in multiple genotypes to identify alleles with variable responses to heat or cold stress and to distinguish examples of cis- or trans-regulatory variation for stress-responsive expression changes. We used motifs enriched near the transcription start sites (TSSs) for thermal stress-responsive genes to develop predictive models of gene expression responses. Prediction accuracies can be improved by focusing only on motifs within unmethylated regions near the TSS and vary for genes with different dynamic responses to stress. Models trained on expression responses in a single genotype and promoter sequences provided lower performance when applied to other genotypes but this could be improved by using models trained on data from all three genotypes tested. The analysis of genes with cis-regulatory variation provides evidence for structural variants that result in presence/absence of transcription factor binding sites in creating variable responses. This study provides insights into cis-regulatory motifs for heat- and cold-responsive gene expression and defines a framework for developing models to predict expression responses across multiple genotypes.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)514-534
Number of pages21
JournalPlant Cell
Volume34
Issue number1
DOIs
StatePublished - Jan 2022

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
This study was funded by the National Science Foundation (grants IOS-IOS-1444456, IOS-1546899, and IOS-1733633).

Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2021. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of American Society of Plant Biologists.

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Prediction of conserved and variable heat and cold stress response in maize using cis-regulatory information'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this