Comparative Metabolomic Studies of Siberian Wildrye (Elymus sibiricus L.): A New Look at the Mechanism of Plant Drought Resistance

Abstract

Drought is one of the most important factors affecting plant growth and production due to ongoing global climate change. Elymus sibiricus has been widely applied for ecological restoration and reseeding of degraded grassland in the Qinghai–Tibetan Plateau (QTP) because of its strong adaptability to barren, salted, and drought soils. To explore the mechanism of drought resistance in E. sibiricus, drought-tolerant and drought-sensitive genotypes of E. sibiricus were used in metabolomic studies under simulated long-term and short-term drought stress. A total of 1091 metabolites were detected, among which, 27 DMs were considered to be the key metabolites for drought resistance of E. sibiricus in weighted gene co-expression network analysis (WGCNA). Ten metabolites, including 3-amino-2-methylpropanoic acid, coniferin, R-aminobutyrate, and so on, and 12 metabolites, including L-Proline, L-histidine, N-acetylglycine, and so on, showed differential accumulation patterns under short-term and long-term drought stress, respectively, and thus, could be used as biomarkers for drought-tolerant and drought-sensitive E. sibiricus. In addition, different metabolic accumulation patterns and different drought response mechanisms were also found in drought-tolerant and drought-sensitive genotypes of E. sibiricus. Finally, we constructed metabolic pathways and metabolic patterns for the two genotypes. This metabolomic study on the drought stress response of E. sibiricus can provide resources and a reference for the breeding of new drought-tolerant cultivars of E. sibiricus.

Integrating Full-Length Transcriptome and RNA Sequencing of Siberian Wildrye (Elymus sibiricus) to Reveal Molecular Mechanisms in Response to Drought Stress

“…In our previous research, based on the drought resistance evaluation of E. sibiricus germplasm resources, drought-tolerant (XJ030-21, X) and drought-sensitive (W16-29, W) accessions were screened [ 22 ]. In a growth chamber with a photo period of 16 h of light and 8 h of dark at a temperature of 25 °C, two different genotypes of E. sibiricus were grown from seedlings.…”

“…Therefore, we used all the genes to perform trend analysis on OmicSmart (https://www.omicsmart.com, accessed on 28 February 2023). The relative electrical conductivity (REC) and relative water content (RWC) (Figure S7) from our previous study [22] and all genes from this study were used to perform WGCNA (weighted gene co-expression network analysis) by OmicSmart (https://www.omicsmart.com, accessed 22 March 2023), to identify gene modules associated with phenotypic indicators. In addition, the visualizations of Venn diagrams, volcano map, and heatmaps were built using the free online platform Hiplot (https://hiplot.com.cn/home/index.html, accessed on 17 January 2023).…”

“…The following supporting information can be downloaded at: https://www.mdpi.com/article/10.3390/plants12142719/s1. [22], which was the previously published paper by the first author; Table S1: Full-length transcriptome data statistics of three mixed duplicate samples; Table S2: Corrected clustering of full-length non-chimeric sequences; Table S3: Statistics of full-length transcriptome data corrected by transcriptome data; Table S4 S7: Genes selected for transcriptome verification and their quantitative PCR primer sequences.…”

Genotype-specific responses to drought stress in Siberian wildrye (Elymus sibiricus): Insights from comparative physiological and transcriptomic analyses

“…It is extensively used in natural grasslands, cultivated pastures, and the ecological restoration of degraded grasslands [43][44][45][46] . Furthermore, E. sibiricus exhibits remarkable resistance to barren conditions, drought, cold, salinity, and diseases 45,47 . However, despite its impressive resilience, the mechanisms underlying its drought tolerance remain poorly understood.…”

Biotic and Abiotic Stressors in Plant Metabolism

“…Abiotic stress is also an important factor that induces metabolomic change in plants. Yu et al [ 12 ] explored the variation in the metabolome as a consequence of drought stress in Elymus sibiricus drought-tolerant and drought-sensitive genotypes. This study led to identifying potential biomarkers of drought stress in E .…”