Drought is one of the most important environmental factor limiting the growth of woody and non woody plants. In the present paper, we aimed to explore the performance of Maclura pomifera under a prolonged drought period followed by re-watering. M. pomifera plants were exposed to four different watering regimes (100%, 75%, 50% and 30% of the field capacity (FC)) for three weeks and then rewatered. The exposure to drought affected physiological, morphological and biochemical traits of M. pomifera. Leaf area, relative water content and water potential of leaf decreased in parallel with increased water deficit. Malondialdehyde content increased along with the drought stress experiment. Soluble carbohydrates (sucrose, glucose and fructose) accumulated during drought stress, but decreased after 22 days of water deficit in severe stressed plants (30% FC). Proline and mannitol, two compatible osmolytes, were higher in drought stresses plants than in control plants. Additionally the activity of antioxidant enzymes (SOD, APX, DHAR and GR) resulted affected by drought stress. In the recovery period, the physiological parameters as well as the proline content recovered at control levels, whereas soluble sugars, mannitol and total activity of antioxidant enzymes remained slight higher than in control plants, presumably to allow plants a complete recovery after stress. Our results suggest that M. pomifera has a good adaptive response to drought stress, probably corresponded to decreasing oxidative injury by induction of the antioxidant system and accumulation of stable and protective osmolytes such as proline and mannitol at higher rates.

Cannabis sativa has a complex history reflected in both selection on naturally occurring compounds and historical trade routes among humans. Iran is a rich resource of natural populationswhich hold the promise to characterize historical patterns of population structure and genetic diversity within Cannabis. Recent advances in high-throughput DNA sequencing technologies have dramatically increased our ability to produce information to the point that it is now feasible to inexpensively obtain population level genotype information at a large scale. In the present investigation, we have explored the use of Genotyping-By-Sequencing (GBS) in Iranian cannabis. We genotyped 98 cannabis samples 36 from Iranian locations and 26 accessions from two germplasm collections. In total, 24,710 high-quality Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms (SNP) were identified. Clustering analysis by Principal Component Analysis (PCA) identified two genetic clusters among Iranian populations and fineSTRUCTURE analysis identified 19 populations with some geographic partitioning. We defined Iranian cannabis in two main groups using the results of the PCA and discovered some strong signal to define some locations as population according to fineSTRUCTURE analyses. However, single nucleotide variant analysis uncovered a relatively moderate level of variation among Iranian cannabis.

Fat-tail content of sheep breeds is varied and the molecular mechanisms regulating fat-tail development have not been well characterized. Aiming at better identifying the important candidate genes and their functional pathways contributing to fat deposition in the tail, a comparative transcriptome analysis was performed between fat- (Lori-Bakhtiari) and thin-tailed (Zel) Iranian sheep breeds using RNA-seq. The experiment was conducted on six male lambs (three lambs per each breed) at seven months of age. Four different combinations of aligners and statistical methods including Hisat2 + edgeR, Hisat2 + DESeq2, STAR + edgeR and STAR + DESeq2 were used to identify the differentially expressed genes (DEGs). The DEGs were selected for functional enrichment analysis and protein-protein interaction (PPI) network construction. Module analysis was also conducted to mine the functional sub-networks from the PPI network. In total, 264 genes including 80 up- and 184 down-regulated genes were identified as DEGs. The RNA-Seq results were validated by Q-RT-PCR. Functional analysis of DEGs and the module analysis of PPI network demonstrated that in addition to pathways affecting lipid metabolism, a series of enriched functional terms related to “response to interleukin”, “MAPK signaling pathways”, “Wnt signaling pathway”, “ECM-receptor interaction”, “regulation of actin cytoskeleton”, and “response to cAMP” might contribute to the deposition of fat in tails of sheep. Overall results using RNA-Seq analysis characterized important candidate genes involved in the fatty acid metabolism and regulation of fat deposition, suggesting novel insights into molecular aspects of fat-tail metabolism in sheep. Selected DEGs should be further investigated as potential markers associated with the fat-tail development in sheep breeds.

Emerging evidence suggests that long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) participate in the regulation of a diverse range of biological processes. However, most studies have been focused on a few established model organisms and little is known about lncRNAs in fat-tail development in sheep. Here, the first profile of lncRNA in sheep fat-tail along with their possible roles in fat deposition were investigated, based on a comparative transcriptome analysis between fat-tailed (Lori-Bakhtiari) and thin-tailed (Zel) Iranian sheep breeds. Among all identified lncRNAs candidates, 358 and 66 transcripts were considered novel intergenic (lincRNAs) and novel intronic (ilncRNAs) corresponding to 302 and 58 gene loci, respectively. Our results indicated that a low percentage of the novel lncRNAs were conserved. Also, synteny analysis identified 168 novel lincRNAs with the same syntenic region in human, bovine and chicken. Only seven lncRNAs were identified as differentially expressed genes between fat and thin tailed breeds. Q-RT-PCR results were consistent with the RNA-Seq data and validated the findings. Target prediction analysis revealed that the novel lncRNAs may act in cis or trans and regulate the expression of genes that are involved in the lipid metabolism. A gene regulatory network including lncRNA-mRNA interactions were constructed and three significant modules were found, with genes relevant to lipid metabolism, insulin and calcium signaling pathway. Moreover, integrated analysis with AnimalQTLdb database further suggested six lincRNAs and one ilncRNAs as candidates of sheep fat-tail development. Our results highlighted the putative contributions of lncRNAs in regulating expression of genes associated with fat-tail development in sheep.

Expression patterns of four candidate AREB/ABF genes and four DREB/CBF genes were evaluated in leaf and root tissues of five grape varieties (‘Qalati’, ‘Kaj Angoor’, ‘Sabz Angoor’, ‘Siahe Zarghan’, ‘Bidane Safid’) with differential response to drought stress. Among the AREB/ABF genes, AREB1 and ABF2 showed up-regulation in response to drought stress in leaf and root tissues of all varieties while AREB2 and ABF1 showed down-regulation in both leaf and root tissues of the sensitive variety ‘Bidane Sefid’ in response to drought and salt stress. Among the DREB/CBF genes, CBF4 was the most responsive to drought stress in both leaf and root tissues. CBF2 and CBF3 showed up-regulation in all varieties in response to drought stress in leaf except in ‘Bidane Sefid’. Under salinity stress, AREB2 and ABF2 showed up-regulation in response to the increasing level of salinity in the leaf tissues but in the root tissues ABF2 was up-regulated in response to increasing NaCl concentration while AREB2 was down-regulated. Therefore, it seems AREB2 has tissue-specific response to salinity stress. All CBF genes were up-regulated in response to salinity stress in the leaf and root tissues. Expression data suggested that CBF2 is more responsive to NaCl stress. Among all four promising and stress tolerant varieties ‘Siah Zarghan’ and ‘Kaj Angoor’ were more tolerant than ‘Qalati’ and ‘Sabz Angoor’ to drought and salinity.

Cannabis is an annual plant with a long history of use as food, feed, fiber, oil, medicine, and narcotics. Despite realizing its true value, it has not yet found its true place. Cannabis has had a long history with many ups and downs, and now it is our turn to promote it. Cannabis contains approximately 600 identified and many yet unidentified potentially useful compounds. Cannabinoids, phenolic compounds, terpenoids, and alkaloids are some of the secondary metabolites present in cannabis. However, among a plethora of unique chemical compounds found in this plant, the most important ones are phytocannabinoids (PCs). Over hundreds of 21-22-carbon compounds exclusively produce in cannabis glandular hairs through either polyketide and or deoxyxylulose phosphate/methylerythritol phosphate (DOXP/MEP) pathways. Trans-Δ9-tetrahydrocannabinol (Δ9-THC) and cannabidiol (CBD) are those that first come to mind while talking about cannabis. Nevertheless, despite the low concentration, cannabinol (CBN), cannabigerol (CBG), cannabichromene (CBC), tetrahydrocannabivarin (THCV), cannabidivarin (CBDV), cannabinodiol (CBND), and cannabinidiol (CBDL) may have potentially some medical effects. PCs and endocannabinoids (ECs) mediate their effects mainly through CB1 and CB2 receptors. Despite all concerns regarding cannabis, nobody can ignore the use of cannabinoids as promising tonic, analgesic, antipyretic, antiemetic, anti-inflammatory, anti-epileptic, anticancer agents, which are effective for pain relief, depression, anxiety, sleep disorders, nausea and vomiting, multiple sclerosis, cardiovascular disorders, and appetite stimulation. The scientific community and public society have now increasingly accepted cannabis specifically hemp as much more than a recreational drug. There are growing demands for cannabinoids, mainly CBD, with many diverse therapeutic and nutritional properties in veterinary or human medicine. The main objective of this review article is to historically summarize findings concerning cannabinoids, mainly THC and CBD, towards putting these valuable compounds into food, feed and health baskets and current and future trends in the consumption of products derived from cannabis.

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Long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) are transcribed RNA molecules >200 nucleotides in length that do not encode proteins and serve as key regulators of diverse biological processes. Recently, thousands of long intergenic non-coding RNAs (lincRNAs), a type of lncRNAs, have been identified in mammalians using massive parallel large sequencing technologies. The availability of the genome sequence of sheep (Ovis aries) has allowed us genomic prediction of non-coding RNAs. This is the first study to identify lincRNAs using RNA-seq data of eight different tissues of sheep, including brain, heart, kidney, liver, lung, ovary, skin, and white adipose. A computational pipeline was employed to characterize 325 putative lincRNAs with high confidence from eight important tissues of sheep using different criteria such as GC content, exon number, gene length, co-expression analysis, stability, and tissue-specific scores. Sixty-four putative lincRNAs displayed tissues-specific expression. The highest number of tissues-specific lincRNAs was found in skin and brain. All novel lincRNAs that aligned to the human and mouse lincRNAs had conserved synteny. These closest protein-coding genes were enriched in 11 significant GO terms such as limb development, appendage development, striated muscle tissue development, and multicellular organismal development. The findings reported here have important implications for the study of sheep genome.