Transcriptional Analysis of lncRNAs in Brachypodium distachyon under Drought Stress

Drought is one of the severe abiotic stresses that affect plant growth and metabolism in various ways and is also the main limiting factor for global crop distribution and production. Researches regarding the response to drought currently concentrated on the genes encoding proteins, but a wide variety of researches have shown that many non-coding RNAs are also involved in drought responses. In addition, most of the studies related to drought still take the model plants Arabidopsis thaliana and rice as experimental materials. As a dicotyledon, the research results from A. thaliana may not be applicable to monocotyledonous cereal crops. However, the rice, which belongs to Gramineae, its relationship with temperate crops is far away, and it is not always possible to achieve the expected results. Compared with them, the Brachypodium distachyon is a suitable option, especially for the temperate crops. Therefore, we applied drought treatment to B. distachyon and performed high-throughput sequencing to investigate the non-coding RNAs involved in drought response through comparative and bioinformatics analyses. A total of 90 lncRNAs with differential expression were involved in this study. According to the functional annotations, the predicted target genes were divided into five categories, including three photosynthesis-related genes, two transcription factors, one peptide, five ribosomal proteins, and one glycoside hydrolase. Except that the transcription factor wox11 was up-regulated under drought, the other target genes were down-regulated. The results provide a theoretical basis for further characterizing candidate genes involved in drought stress, and improve new insights into the defense mechanisms of drought response in B. distachyon. (C) 2020 Friends Science Publishers