title: Leaf Growth Response to Mild Drought: Natural Variation in Arabidopsis Sheds Light on Trait Architecture.
abstract: Plant growth and crop yield are negatively affected by a reduction in water availability. However, a clear understanding of how growth is regulated under nonlethal drought conditions is lacking. Recent advances in genomics, phenomics, and transcriptomics allow in-depth analysis of natural variation. In this study, we conducted a detailed screening of leaf growth responses to mild drought in a worldwide collection of Arabidopsis thaliana accessions. The genetic architecture of the growth responses upon mild drought was investigated by subjecting the different leaf growth phenotypes to genome-wide association mapping and by characterizing the transcriptome of young developing leaves. Although no major effect locus was found to be associated with growth in mild drought, the transcriptome analysis delivered further insight into the natural variation of transcriptional responses to mild drought in a specific tissue. Coexpression analysis indicated the presence of gene clusters that co-vary over different genetic backgrounds, among others a cluster of genes with important regulatory functions in the growth response to osmotic stress. It was found that the occurrence of a mild drought stress response in leaves can be inferred with high accuracy across accessions based on the expression profile of 283 genes. A genome-wide association study on the expression data revealed that trans regulation seems to be more important than cis regulation in the transcriptional response to environmental perturbations.
authors.affiliation: Department of Plant Systems Biology, VIB, Ghent, Belgium.|Department of Plant Biotechnology and Bioinformatics, Ghent University, 9052 Ghent, Belgium.
authors.forename: Pieter
authors.identifier: 0000-0002-9677-8727
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Clauw
authors.affiliation: Department of Plant Systems Biology, VIB, Ghent, Belgium.|Department of Plant Biotechnology and Bioinformatics, Ghent University, 9052 Ghent, Belgium.
authors.forename: Frederik
authors.identifier: 0000-0001-6565-5145
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Coppens
authors.affiliation: Gregor Mendel Institute of Molecular Plant Biology, 1030 Vienna, Austria.
authors.forename: Arthur
authors.identifier: 0000-0003-0831-1463
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Korte
authors.affiliation: Department of Plant Systems Biology, VIB, Ghent, Belgium.|Department of Plant Biotechnology and Bioinformatics, Ghent University, 9052 Ghent, Belgium.
authors.forename: Dorota
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Herman
authors.affiliation: Department of Plant Systems Biology, VIB, Ghent, Belgium.|Department of Plant Biotechnology and Bioinformatics, Ghent University, 9052 Ghent, Belgium.
authors.forename: Bram
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Slabbinck
authors.affiliation: Department of Plant Systems Biology, VIB, Ghent, Belgium.|Department of Plant Biotechnology and Bioinformatics, Ghent University, 9052 Ghent, Belgium.
authors.forename: Stijn
authors.identifier: 0000-0003-4402-2191
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Dhondt
authors.affiliation: Department of Plant Systems Biology, VIB, Ghent, Belgium.|Department of Plant Biotechnology and Bioinformatics, Ghent University, 9052 Ghent, Belgium.
authors.forename: Twiggy
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Van Daele
authors.affiliation: Department of Plant Systems Biology, VIB, Ghent, Belgium.|Department of Plant Biotechnology and Bioinformatics, Ghent University, 9052 Ghent, Belgium.
authors.forename: Liesbeth
authors.identifier: 0000-0001-5724-029X
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: De Milde
authors.affiliation: Department of Plant Systems Biology, VIB, Ghent, Belgium.|Department of Plant Biotechnology and Bioinformatics, Ghent University, 9052 Ghent, Belgium.
authors.forename: Mattias
authors.identifier: 0000-0003-4173-2366
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Vermeersch
authors.affiliation: Department of Plant Systems Biology, VIB, Ghent, Belgium.|Department of Plant Biotechnology and Bioinformatics, Ghent University, 9052 Ghent, Belgium.
authors.forename: Katrien
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Maleux
authors.affiliation: Department of Plant Systems Biology, VIB, Ghent, Belgium.|Department of Plant Biotechnology and Bioinformatics, Ghent University, 9052 Ghent, Belgium.
authors.forename: Steven
authors.identifier: 0000-0002-5341-136X
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Maere
authors.affiliation: Department of Plant Systems Biology, VIB, Ghent, Belgium.|Department of Plant Biotechnology and Bioinformatics, Ghent University, 9052 Ghent, Belgium.
authors.forename: Nathalie
authors.identifier: 0000-0002-3946-1758
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Gonzalez
authors.affiliation: Department of Plant Systems Biology, VIB, Ghent, Belgium.|Department of Plant Biotechnology and Bioinformatics, Ghent University, 9052 Ghent, Belgium.
authors.forename: Dirk
authors.identifier: 0000-0002-3217-8407
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Inzé
mesh_terms: D017360:Arabidopsis / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism*; D029681:Arabidopsis Proteins / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism*; D055864:Droughts; D020869:Gene Expression Profiling; D018506:Gene Expression Regulation, Plant / Q000235:genetics / Q000502:physiology; D055106:Genome-Wide Association Study; D018515:Plant Leaves / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism*
chemical_list: D029681:Arabidopsis Proteins