Abstract
Ultraviolet radiation (UVR) is a major environmental stressor for terrestrial plants. Here we investigated genetic responses to acute broadband UVR exposure in the highly desiccation-tolerant mosses Syntrichia caninervis and Syntrichia ruralis, using a comparative transcriptomics approach. We explored whether UVR protection is physiologically plastic and induced by UVR exposure, addressing the following questions: (1) What is the timeline of changes in the transcriptome with acute UVR exposure in these two species? (2) What genes are involved in the UVR response? and (3) How do the two species differ in their transcriptomic response to UVR? There were remarkable differences between the two species after 10 and 30 min of UVR exposure, including no overlap in significantly differentially abundant transcripts (DATs) after 10 min of UVR exposure and more than twice as many DATs for S. caninervis as there were for S. ruralis. Photosynthesis-related transcripts were involved in the response of S. ruralis to UVR, while membrane-related transcripts were indicated in the response of S. caninervis. In both species, transcripts involved in oxidative stress and those important for desiccation tolerance (such as late embryogenesis abundant genes and early light-inducible protein genes) were involved in response to UVR, suggesting possible roles in UVR tolerance and cross-talk with desiccation tolerance in these species. The results of this study suggest potential UVR-induced responses that may have roles outside of UVR tolerance, and that the response to URV is different in these two species, perhaps a reflection of adaptation to different environmental conditions.
Highlights
Drastic environmental challenges accompanied evolutionary transitions to terrestrial life (Gray, 1993)
Mosses exposed to ultraviolet radiation (UVR) while hydrated may utilize a more active response to UVR, while arid-adapted species may have passive protection
In this study we found little overlap in the transcriptomic response to broadband UVR between xeric S. caninervis and the more mesic S. ruralis
Summary
Drastic environmental challenges accompanied evolutionary transitions to terrestrial life (Gray, 1993). Tolerance of UVR and desiccation are thought to be ancestral to land plants (Graham et al, 2000, 2004) and, the potential for these traits can be found on all branches of UV Radiation Transcriptomics in Syntrichia the embryophyte tree of life. In some plants UVR induces the accumulation of transcripts encoding early light-inducible proteins (ELIPs; Singh et al, 2014), which function in both photoprotection and desiccation tolerance in resurrection plants by binding to and protecting photosynthetic pigments (Adamska et al, 1999; Zeng, 2002; Hutin et al, 2003; Oliver et al, 2004; Van Buren et al, 2019). Transcripts encoding the hydrophilic late embryogenesis abundant (LEA) proteins accumulate under various abiotic stresses in vegetative tissues of plants, including desiccation (Amara et al, 2014; Oliver et al, 2020) where they are thought to help transform cell cytoplasm into the protective biological “glassy state” (Buitink and Leprince, 2004)
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