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Publications (140)
Aluminum (Al) toxicity severely restricts the growth and productivity of elephant grass in acidic soils around the world. However, the molecular mechanisms of Al response have not been investigated in elephant grass. In this study, we conducted phenotype, physiology, and transcriptome analysis of elephant grass roots in response to Al stress. Pheno...
Lespedeza potaninii, a xerophytic subshrub belonging to the legume family, is native to the Tengger Desert and is highly adapted to drought. It has important ecological value due to its drought adaptability, but the underlying molecular mechanisms remain largely unknown. Here, we report a 1.24 Gb chromosome-scale assembly of the L. potaninii genome...
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The coumarin scopoletin and its glycosylated form scopolin constitute a vast class of natural products that are considered to be high-value compounds, distributed widely in the plant kingdom, they help plants adapt to environmental stresses. However, the underlying molecular mechanism of how scopolin is involved in the regulation of plant drought t...
The trihelix gene family is a plant-specific family of transcription factors that play an important role in many metabolic pathways, including plant growth and development and stress responses. Drought stress is a major factor limiting the distribution and yield of Melilotus albus. However, the distribution of this gene family in M. albus and its b...
Melilotus albus is a high-quality forage, due to its high protein content, and aboveground biomass and salt tolerance. Rab (Ras-related protein in the brain) proteins are the largest GTPase family which play a key role in intracellular membrane transport, and many Rab genes have been identified in eukaryotes. The growth and distribution of M. albus...
Forage breeding faces many challenges including variable ploidy levels, different reproductive modes, and the need to evaluate traits that are laborious to assess. Besides, breeding efforts are distributed across hundreds of forage species that need to be adapted to a vast range of systems and environments worldwide. Conventional forage breeding is...
As an important forage legume with high values in feed and medicine, Melilotus albus has been widely cultivated. The AP2/ERF transcription factor has been shown to play an important regulatory role in plant drought resistance, but it has not been reported in the legume forage crop M. albus. To digger the genes of M. albus in response to drought str...
Polyamine and ethylene pathway genes (PEGs) are widely involved in regulating plant abiotic stresses. However, the PEGs in Cleistogenes songorica have not yet been thoroughly studied. In the present study, 17 polyamine-, 12 ethylene- and 6 S-adenosylmethionine (SAM)- related genes were identified at the genome-wide level in C. songorica. Phylogenet...
Melilotus officinalis is an important forage and green manure crop. There is a high degree of genetic diversity within species of M. officinalis. Despite the forage potential and the ability of nitrogen fixation, it has not been propagated in recent years because its high coumarin content. As a forage crop, the breeding goal of M. officinalis was m...
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To investigate the effects of the dietary inclusion of elephant grass on the growth performance, blood profiles, carcass characteristics, ileum and stomach microbiota of fattening pigs, pigs were fed one of seven diets including a basal diet (Control), and six treatments, where the basal diet was supplemented with 10%, 15% or 20% of elephant grass,...
The GRAS gene family is a plant−specific family of transcription factors, which play an important role in many metabolic pathways, such as plant growth and development and stress response. However, there is no report on the comprehensive study of the GRAS gene family of Melilotus albus. Here, we identified 55 MaGRAS genes, which were classified int...
Drought stress is one of the major constraints that decreases global crop productivity. Alfalfa, planted mainly in arid and semi-arid areas, is of crucial importance in sustaining the agricultural system. The family 1 UDP-glycosyltransferases (UGT) is indispensable because it takes part in the regulation of plant growth and stress resistance. Howev...
Developmental signals and environmental stresses regulate carbon distribution in the vegetative and reproductive organs of plants and affect seed yield. Cleistogenes songorica is a xerophytic grass with great potential application value in ecological restoration. However, how carbohydrate transport and distribution during grain filling affect the s...
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Bioenergy grass provides an important biomass resource for biofuel production worldwide. The internode elongation of grass stems is central to biomass production for biofuels; however, this process is poorly understood in elephant grass because it is a complex trait regulated by many genes. In this study, we adopted phenotypic, histological, transc...
Napier grass is the most important perennial tropical grass native to Sub-Saharan Africa and widely grown in tropical and subtropical regions around the world, primarily as a forage crop for animal feed, but with potential as an energy crop and in a wide range of other areas. Genomic resources have recently been developed for Napier grass that need...
SHI-related sequence (SRS) transcription factors, specific to plants, act as crucial regulators of plant organ growth and development. Here, we examined the Medicago sativa (alfalfa) SRS gene family (MsSRSs) to analyze the structure and function of MsSRSs using bioinformatics methods, and verify their abiotic stress responses through growth experim...
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Melilotus species are used as green manure and rotation crops worldwide and contain abundant pharmacologically active coumarins. However, there is a paucity of information on its genome and coumarin production and function. Here, we reported a chromosome-scale assembly of the M. albus genome with 1.04 Gb in eight chromosomes, containing 71.42% repe...
Genetic diversity of plants is the brace of biodiversity and diversity within species, between species, and of ecosystems. SSR markers are the most preferable molecular marker tool that has been successfully used to study the genetic diversity of plant species. Development of miRNA-SSR markers has been deed in animals but is still limited in plants...
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Coumarins, natural products abundant in Melilotus albus, confer features in response to abiotic stresses, and are mainly present as glycoconjugates. UGTs (UDP-glycosyltransferases) are responsible for glycosylation modification of coumarins. However, information regarding the relationship between coumarin biosynthesis and stress-responsive UGTs rem...
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In view of the global energy crisis and climate change, elephant grass (Cenchrus purpureus (Schumach.) Morrone syn. Pennisetum purpureum Schumach.) represents a useful lignocellulosic biofuel feed stock due to its high biomass yield and persistence. Internode elongation is an important factor that affects the productivity of energy grass. Elucidati...
Long terminal repeat retrotransposons (LTR-RTs) contribute a large fraction of many sequenced plant genomes and play important roles in genomic diversity and phenotypic variations. LTR-RTs are abundantly distributed in plant genomes, facilitating the development of markers based on LTR-RTs for a variety of genotyping purposes. Whole-genome analysis...
Salt stress is a major abiotic stress limiting crop productivity. Long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) are transcripts with more than 200 nucleotides but lacking protein-encoding potential and generally plays a regulatory role in plant response to abiotic stresses. However, no information is known about lncRNAs in Melilotus albus, a wonderful leguminous f...
Melilotus is an important genus of legumes with industrial and medicinal value, partly due
to the production of coumarin. To explore the genetic diversity and population structure of Melilotus,
40 accessions were analyzed using long terminal repeat (LTR) retrotransposon-based markers. A
total of 585,894,349 bp of LTR retrotransposon sequences, acco...
The DNA-binding with one zinc finger (Dof) family of plant-specific transcription factors has a variety of important functions in gene transcriptional regulation, development, and stress responses. However, the structure and expression patterns of Dof family have not been identified in Cleistogenes songorica, which is an important xerophytic and pe...
Napier grass is the most important perennial tropical grass native to Sub-Saharan Africa and widely grown in tropical and subtropical regions around the world, primarily as a forage crop for animal feed, but with potential as an energy crop and in a wide range of other areas. Genomic resources have recently been developed for Napier grass that need...
Melilotus albus is an annual or biennial legume species that adapts to extreme environments via its high stress tolerance. NAC and MYB transcription factors (TFs) are involved in the regulation of lignin biosynthesis, which has not been studied in M. albus. A total of 101 MaNAC and 299 MaMYB members were identified based on M. albus genome. Chromos...
As an important forage legume in the world, alfalfa (Medicago sativa L.) has high adaptability to various unfavorable climatic conditions and high biomass, and have been playing critical roles in animal husbandry and industrial applications. As α‐linolenic acid cannot be synthesized by animals, and most must be obtained from plants, the increasing...
Cleistogenes songorica (2n = 4x = 40) is a desert grass with a unique dimorphic flowering mechanism and an ability to survive extreme drought. Little is known about the genetics underlying drought tolerance and its reproductive adaptability. Here, we sequenced and assembled a high-quality chromosome-level C. songorica genome (contig N50 = 21.28 Mb)...
Abstract
Background
As global warming continues, heat stress (HS) is becoming an increasingly significant factor limiting plant growth and reproduction, especially for cool-season grass species. The objective of this study was to determine the transcriptional regulatory network of Cleistogenes songorica under HS via transcriptome profiling, identif...
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Elephant grass (2n = 4x = 28; Cenchrus purpureus Schumach.), also known as Napier grass, is an important forage grass and potential energy crop in tropical and subtropi-cal regions of Asia, Africa and America. However, no study has yet reported a genome assembly for elephant grass at the chromosome scale. Here, we report a high-quality chromosome-s...
Plant-specific NAC (NAM, ATAF, CUC) transcription factor (TF) family plays important roles in biological processes such as plant growth and response to stress. Nevertheless, no information is known about NAC TFs in Cleistogenes songorica, a prominent xerophyte desert grass in northwestern China. In this study, 162 NAC genes were found from the Clei...
Simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers are commonly used for many genetic applications, such as map construction, fingerprinting, and genetic diversity analyses, due to their high reproducibility, polymorphism, and abundance. Endogenous miRNAs play essential roles in plant development and gene expression under diverse biotic and abiotic stress condit...
Cleistogenes songorica is a cultivated turfgrass species that employs a mixed breeding system. To determine the morphological differences and molecular mechanisms of the chasmogamous (CH) and cleistogamous (CL) flowers of this species, we evaluated seed traits and analyzed six transcription factor (TF) families related to floral development. The se...
[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0132596.].
Background:
Transcription factors act as important regulators of transcription networks. Basic leucine zipper (bZIP) transcription factors have been shown to be involved in multiple biological processes in plants. However, no information is available for the bZIP family in Cleistogenes songorica, which is an important xerophytic and allotetraploid...
Melilotus is an important forage legume, with high values as feed and medicine, and widely used as green manure, honey plant, and wildlife habitat enhancer. The genetic diversity, structure and subdivision of this forage crop remain unclear, and plant genetic resources are the basis of biodiversity and ecosystem diversity and have attracted increas...
SSR markers are commonly used for many genetic applications, such as map construction, fingerprinting and genetic diversity analysis due to their high reproducibility, levels of polymorphism and abundance. As endogenous, small RNAs, miRNAs have essential roles in plant development and gene expression under diverse stress conditions, including vario...
Background Polyamine and ethylene biosynthesis pathway genes are widely involved in the regulation of plant abiotic stresses. For their biosynthesis, both pathways require the same precursor, Synthase Adenosyl Methionine (SAM) enzyme. Whether they function as competitors or collaborators to regulate plant abiotic stress tolerance is still an elusiv...
Background
Water stress seriously constrains plant growth and yield. Long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) serve as versatile regulators in various biological regulatory processes. To date, the systematic screening and potential functions of lncRNA have not yet been characterized in Cleistogenes songorica, especially under water stress conditions.
Result...
Plant growth and development depends on its ability to maintain optimal cellular homeostasis during abiotic and biotic stresses. Cleistogenes songorica, a xerophyte desert plant, is known to have novel drought stress adaptation strategies and contains rich pools of stress tolerance genes. Proteins encoded by Late Embryogenesis Abundant (LEA) family...
MicroRNAs (miRNAs) exhibit diverse and important roles in regulation of various biological processes at the post-transcriptional level in plants. In this study, Melilotus albus miRNA and their target genes were elucidated from five M. albus near-isogenic lines which differ in coumarin content to construct small RNA libraries through high-throughput...
Cleistogenes songorica, a grass species that exhibits two spatially different type of inflorescence, chastogamy (CH), flowers localized at the top, and cleistogamy (CL) flowers embedded in leaf sheath. This study aimed at dissecting reasons underlying these distinct floral development patterns at morphological and microRNA level. Phenotyping for CH...
Melilotus albus
andMelilotus officinalisare widely used in forage production and herbal medicine due to the biological activity of their coumarins, which have many biological and pharmacological activities, including anti-HIV and anti-tumor effects. To comprehensively evaluateM. albusandM. officinaliscoumarin content (Cou), morphological variation,...
Melilotus is an important genus of legume plants and an herbage with excellent nitrogen fixation; it can tolerate extreme environmental conditions and possesses important medicinal value. However, there is limited genetic information about the genus; thus, we analysed four chloroplast loci (rbcL, matK, psbA-trnH and trnL-F) and one nuclear region (...
Electrophoretogram of the PCR amplifications based on five sequences.
From one to eighteen: M. albus, M. altissimus, M. dentatus, M. elegans, M. hirsutus, M. indicus, M. infestus, M. italicus, M. officinalis, M. polonicus, M. segetalis, M. siculus, M. speciosus, M. spicatus, M. suaveolens, M. sulcatus, M. tauricus, and M. wolgicus.
(TIF)
Bayesian tree based on the combined regions of five sequences.
The abbreviations represent 18 species: Ma-M. albus, Mm-M. altissimus, Md-M. dentatus, Me-M. elegans, Mh-M. hirsutus, Mi-M. indicus, Mf-M. infestus, Mr-M. italicus, Mo-M. officinalis, Mp-M. polonicus, Mg-M. segetalis, Mc-M. siculus, Ms-M. speciosus, Mu-M. spicatus, Mn-M. suaveolens, Ml-...
Information on the primers, amplification conditions and sequence statistics for the five sequences.
(XLS)
Variable sites of the five sequences in the 18 species.
The four colours represent the four canonical bases: green for adenine (A), blue for cytosine (C), purple for guanine (G) and orange-red for thymine (T). The symbol “▲” represents the sequence deletions from 1 to 188.
(XLS)
Information on the 199 Melilotus accessions included in this study.
(XLS)
Melilotus albus Medik. is a legume species with potential to be used as a forage or conserved fodder in Northwest China. Breeding M. albus as a forage crop is focused on simultaneously improving forage yield and reducing coumarin (Cou) content. The goal of the present study was to estimate genotypic variation for several key agronomic traits and to...
Melilotus is one of the most important legume forages, but the lack of molecular markers has limited the development and utilization of Melilotus germplasm resources. In the present study, 151 M clean reads were generated from various genotypes of Melilotus albus using Illumina sequencing. A total of 19,263 potential EST-SSRs were identified from 1...
Coumarin and its derivatives are widely used as fragrances in industrial products and have medical value. The goal of the present study was to discover genes and pathways related to coumarin biosynthesis in Melilotus albus using transcriptome analysis. The genes of five M. albus near-isogenic lines (NILs) that had different coumarin content and β-g...
Melilotus, an annual or biennial herb, belongs to the tribe Trifolieae (Leguminosae) and consists of 19 species. As an important green manure crop, diverse Melilotus species have different values as feed and medicine. To identify different Melilotus species, we examined the efficiency of five candidate regions as barcodes, including the internal tr...
Gap value for identification of ten barcode systems in 18 Melilotus species.
The plots show the combinations of barcode loci surveyed on the y axis. I, ITS; M, matK; R, rbcL; P, trnH-psbA; T, trnL-F. The x axis shows the barcode gap value for 18 species of Melilotus. The error bars suggest 95% confidence intervals for the barcode gap estimate.
(TIF...
Results of pairwise distance analysis based on MEGA 6.0-Compute Pairwise Distance and similarity analysis based on Emboss Needle.
MR, matK+rbcL; MRP, matK+rbcL+trnH-psbA; MRPI, matK+rbcL+trnH-psbA+ITS; MRTP, matK+rbcL+trnL+trnH-psbA; MRTPI, matK+rbcL+trnL+trnH-psbA+ITS.
(XLSX)
Intra-accession gap and distance for 100 individuals of 5 Melilotus species.
ITS, internal transcribed spacer.
(XLSX)
Basic information and intraspecific gap and distance for 101 accessions of 18 Melilotus species.
ITS, internal transcribed spacer.
(XLSX)
Similarity value for single locus based on the analysis of 36 sequences.
36 sequences from 36 plant accessions representing 18 species for every DNA barcode. The plots show that sequences discrepancy of different species is marginally large and difference of sequences from the same species somehow is very slight. The error bars suggest 95% confiden...
Information for 98 accessions of 18 Melilotus species.
(XLSX)
Standardized barcode sequences of 18 Melilotus species for matK, rbcL, trnL, trnH-psbA and ITS.
(ZIP)
