Chapter 4 - Role of lncRNAs in wheat and its wild relatives

Abstract

Wheat being an important crop is the major source of food throughout the world. The cultivated wheat includes Triticum aestivum and T. turgidum, an allohexaploid and allotetraploid, respectively. However, the wild relatives of wheat such as Aegilops tauschii and T. urartu are diploid and grown at a limited scale. The hybridization events among wild relatives have resulted in the formation of modern wheat with improved traits and genome complexity. However, the changing environmental conditions and interactions with new pathogens affect their growth and development. An in-depth analysis of transcriptional complexities is necessary for understanding the regulation of several biological pathways. In recent years, the studies have revealed the regulatory role of long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) in growth and development and stress-responsive pathways. A large set of lncRNAs have been reported in wheat and its wild relatives. Various lncRNAs showed tissue-specific expression patterns which indicate their role in developmental processes. However, during stress conditions, the differential expression of certain lncRNAs suggested their role in plant defense response. LncRNAs act directly or indirectly in regulating the myriad biological processes such as grain yield, vernalization, growth, and adaptation to climatic change. The co-expression analysis also revealed their regulatory role in development, stress responses, and other biological processes. In this chapter, numerous aspects of lncRNAs, including their conserveness among the wheat and its relative, expression profiling, regulatory mechanisms, co-expression, and miRNA interaction networks study, will be discussed.