PEATmoss (Physcomitrella Expression Atlas Tool): a unified gene expression atlas for the model plant Physcomitrella patens.

Physcomitrella patens is a bryophyte model plant that is often used to study plant evolution and development. Its resources are of great importance for comparative genomics and evo-devo approaches. However, expression data from Physcomitrella patens were so far generated using different gene annotation versions and three different platforms: CombiMatrix and NimbleGen expression microarrays and RNA sequencing. The currently available P. patens expression data are distributed across three tools with different visualization methods to access the data. Here, we introduce an interactive expression atlas, Physcomitrella Expression Atlas Tool (PEATmoss), that unifies publicly available expression data for P. patens and provides multiple visualization methods to query the data in a single web-based tool. Moreover, PEATmoss includes 35 expression experiments not previously available in any other expression atlas. To facilitate gene expression queries across different gene annotation versions, and to access P. patens annotations and related resources, a lookup database and web tool linked to PEATmoss was implemented. PEATmoss can be accessed at https://peatmoss.online.uni-marburg.de.

Construction and comparison of three reference-quality genome assemblies for soybean.

We report reference-quality genome assemblies and annotations for two accessions of soybean (Glycine max) and for one accession of Glycine soja, the closest wild relative of G. max. The G. max assemblies provided are for widely used US cultivars: the northern line Williams 82 (Wm82) and the southern line Lee. The Wm82 assembly improves the prior published assembly, and the Lee and G. soja assemblies are new for these accessions. Comparisons among the three accessions show generally high structural conservation, but nucleotide difference of 1.7 single-nucleotide polymorphisms (snps) per kb between Wm82 and Lee, and 4.7 snps per kb between these lines and G. soja. snp distributions and comparisons with genotypes of the Lee and Wm82 parents highlight patterns of introgression and haplotype structure. Comparisons against the US germplasm collection show placement of the sequenced accessions relative to global soybean diversity. Analysis of a pan-gene collection shows generally high conservation, with variation occurring primarily in genomically clustered gene families. We found approximately 40-42 inversions per chromosome between either Lee or Wm82v4 and G. soja, and approximately 32 inversions per chromosome between Wm82 and Lee. We also investigated five domestication loci. For each locus, we found two different alleles with functional differences between G. soja and the two domesticated accessions. The genome assemblies for multiple cultivated accessions and for the closest wild ancestor of soybean provides a valuable set of resources for identifying causal variants that underlie traits for the domestication and improvement of soybean, serving as a basis for future research and crop improvement efforts for this important crop species.

Analysis of clock-regulated genes in Neurospora reveals widespread posttranscriptional control of metabolic potential.

Neurospora crassa has been for decades a principal model for filamentous fungal genetics and physiology as well as for understanding the mechanism of circadian clocks. Eukaryotic fungal and animal clocks comprise transcription-translation-based feedback loops that control rhythmic transcription of a substantial fraction of these transcriptomes, yielding the changes in protein abundance that mediate circadian regulation of physiology and metabolism: Understanding circadian control of gene expression is key to understanding eukaryotic, including fungal, physiology. Indeed, the isolation of clock-controlled genes (ccgs) was pioneered in Neurospora where circadian output begins with binding of the core circadian transcription factor WCC to a subset of ccg promoters, including those of many transcription factors. High temporal resolution (2-h) sampling over 48 h using RNA sequencing (RNA-Seq) identified circadianly expressed genes in Neurospora, revealing that from ∼10% to as much 40% of the transcriptome can be expressed under circadian control. Functional classifications of these genes revealed strong enrichment in pathways involving metabolism, protein synthesis, and stress responses; in broad terms, daytime metabolic potential favors catabolism, energy production, and precursor assembly, whereas night activities favor biosynthesis of cellular components and growth. Discriminative regular expression motif elicitation (DREME) identified key promoter motifs highly correlated with the temporal regulation of ccgs. Correlations between ccg abundance from RNA-Seq, the degree of ccg-promoter activation as reported by ccg-promoter-luciferase fusions, and binding of WCC as measured by ChIP-Seq, are not strong. Therefore, although circadian activation is critical to ccg rhythmicity, posttranscriptional regulation plays a major role in determining rhythmicity at the mRNA level.

Comparative genomics of Saccharomyces cerevisiae natural isolates for bioenergy production.

Lignocellulosic plant material is a viable source of biomass to produce alternative energy including ethanol and other biofuels. However, several factors­including toxic by products from biomass pretreatment and poor fermentation of xylose and other pentose sugars­currently limit the efficiency of microbial biofuel production. To begin to understand the genetic basis of desirable traits, we characterized three strains of Saccharomyces cerevisiae with robust growth in a pretreated lignocellulosic hydrolysate or tolerance to stress conditions relevant to industrial biofuel production, through genome and transcriptome sequencing analysis. All stress resistant strains were highly mosaic, suggesting that genetic admixture may contribute to novel allele combinations underlying these phenotypes. Strain-specific gene sets not found in the lab strain were functionally linked to the tolerances of particular strains. Furthermore,genes with signatures of evolutionary selection were enriched for functional categories important for stress resistance and included stress-responsive signaling factors. Comparison of the strains' transcriptomic responses to heat and ethanol treatment­two stresses relevant to industrial bioethanol production­pointed to physiological processes that were related to particular stress resistance profiles. Many of the genotype-by-environment expression responses occurred at targets of transcription factors with signatures of positive selection, suggesting that these strains have undergone positive selection for stress tolerance. Our results generate new insights into potential mechanisms of tolerance to stresses relevant to biofuel production, including ethanol and heat, present a backdrop for further engineering, and provide glimpses into the natural variation of stress tolerance in wild yeast strains.