Abstract
Renewable fuels are needed to replace fossil fuels in the immediate future. Lignocellulosic bioenergy crops provide a renewable alternative that sequesters atmospheric carbon. To prevent displacement of food crops, it would be advantageous to grow biofuel crops on marginal lands. These lands will likely face more frequent and extreme drought conditions than conventional agricultural land, so it is crucial to see how proposed bioenergy crops fare under these conditions and how that may affect lignocellulosic biomass composition and saccharification properties. We found that while drought impacts the plant cell wall of Sorghum bicolor differently according to tissue and timing of drought induction, drought-induced cell wall compositional modifications are relatively minor and produce no negative effect on biomass conversion. This contrasts with the cell wall-related transcriptome, which had a varied range of highly variable genes (HVGs) within four cell wall-related GO categories, depending on the tissues surveyed and time of drought induction. Further, many HVGs had expression changes in which putative impacts were not seen in the physical cell wall or which were in opposition to their putative impacts. Interestingly, most pre-flowering drought-induced cell wall changes occurred in the leaf, with matrix and lignin compositional changes that did not persist after recovery from drought. Most measurable physical post-flowering cell wall changes occurred in the root, affecting mainly polysaccharide composition and cross-linking. This study couples transcriptomics to cell wall chemical analyses of a C4 grass experiencing progressive and differing drought stresses in the field. As such, we can analyze the cell wall-specific response to agriculturally relevant drought stresses on the transcriptomic level and see whether those changes translate to compositional or biomass conversion differences. Our results bolster the conclusion that drought stress does not substantially affect the cell wall composition of specific aerial and subterranean biomass nor impede enzymatic hydrolysis of leaf biomass, a positive result for biorefinery processes. Coupled with previously reported results on the root microbiome and rhizosphere and whole transcriptome analyses of this study, we can formulate and test hypotheses on individual gene candidates’ function in mediating drought stress in the grass cell wall, as demonstrated in sorghum.
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Claims 8
Claim · model-written summary
Drought caused relatively minor sorghum cell wall compositional changes that varied by tissue and timing.
- Taxon
- Sorghum bicolor
Sorghum bicolore0 - Treatment
- droughte0
- Outcome
- cell wall compositional modificationse0
- Direction
- relatively minore0
- Qualifier
- tissue and timing of drought inductione0
Not reportedComparator
Organisms pictured · Representative pictures of the matched species, not figures from the paper.
Verbatim
e0“drought impacts the plant cell wall of Sorghum bicolor differently according to tissue and timing of drought induction, drought-induced cell wall compositional modifications are relatively minor”
Claim · model-written summary
Drought caused no negative effect on sorghum biomass conversion.
- Taxon
- Sorghum bicolorSorghum bicolore0
- Treatment
- droughte2
- Outcome
- biomass conversione1
- Direction
- no negative effecte1
Not reportedComparator
Organisms pictured · Representative pictures of the matched species, not figures from the paper.
Verbatim
e0“Sorghum bicolor”
e1“produce no negative effect on biomass conversion”
e2“drought-induced cell wall compositional modifications”
Claim · model-written summary
Cell wall transcriptome HVGs varied across four GO categories with tissue and drought timing.
- Taxon
- Sorghum bicolorSorghum bicolore0
- Gene
- highly variable genes (HVGs)e1
- Outcome
- highly variable genes (HVGs) within four cell wall-related GO categoriese1
- Qualifier
- tissues surveyed and time of drought inductione1
Organisms pictured · Representative pictures of the matched species, not figures from the paper.
Verbatim
e0“Sorghum bicolor”
e1“cell wall-related transcriptome, which had a varied range of highly variable genes (HVGs) within four cell wall-related GO categories, depending on the tissues surveyed and time of drought induction”
Claim · model-written summary
Many HVG expression changes had no matching physical cell wall change or opposed the predicted effect.
- Taxon
- Sorghum bicolorSorghum bicolore0
- Gene
- HVGse1
- Outcome
- expression changese1
Organisms pictured · Representative pictures of the matched species, not figures from the paper.
Verbatim
e0“Sorghum bicolor”
e1“many HVGs had expression changes in which putative impacts were not seen in the physical cell wall or which were in opposition to their putative impacts”
Claim · model-written summary
Most pre-flowering drought cell wall changes occurred in leaves and involved matrix and lignin composition.
- Taxon
- Sorghum bicolorSorghum bicolore0
- Organ / stage
- leafe1
- Treatment
- droughte1
- Outcome
- matrix and lignin compositional changese1
Organisms pictured · Representative pictures of the matched species, not figures from the paper.
Verbatim
e0“Sorghum bicolor”
e1“most pre-flowering drought-induced cell wall changes occurred in the leaf, with matrix and lignin compositional changes”
Claim · model-written summary
Pre-flowering leaf wall changes did not persist after drought recovery.
- Taxon
- Sorghum bicolorSorghum bicolore0
- Treatment
- droughte1
- Outcome
- matrix and lignin compositional changese1
- Direction
- did not persiste1
Organisms pictured · Representative pictures of the matched species, not figures from the paper.
Verbatim
e0“Sorghum bicolor”
e1“matrix and lignin compositional changes that did not persist after recovery from drought”
Claim · model-written summary
Most physical post-flowering cell wall changes occurred in roots, mainly affecting polysaccharide composition and cross-linking.
- Taxon
- Sorghum bicolorSorghum bicolore0
- Organ / stage
- roote1
- Outcome
- polysaccharide composition and cross-linkinge1
Organisms pictured · Representative pictures of the matched species, not figures from the paper.
Verbatim
e0“Sorghum bicolor”
e1“Most measurable physical post-flowering cell wall changes occurred in the root, affecting mainly polysaccharide composition and cross-linking”
Claim · model-written summary
Drought did not impede enzymatic hydrolysis of sorghum leaf biomass.
- Taxon
- Sorghum bicolorSorghum bicolore0
- Treatment
- drought stresse1
- Outcome
- enzymatic hydrolysis of leaf biomasse1
- Direction
- nor impedee1
Not reportedComparator
Organisms pictured · Representative pictures of the matched species, not figures from the paper.
Verbatim
e0“Sorghum bicolor”
e1“drought stress does not substantially affect the cell wall composition of specific aerial and subterranean biomass nor impede enzymatic hydrolysis of leaf biomass”
The same questions in other papers
drought · growth · Sorghum bicolor (sorghum)Positive and negative results
23 papers in the same direction as this paper · 5 in the opposite direction
- positive
- positive
- positive
25 papers more in this group
See all 29 papers →drought · physiology: enzyme activity · Sorghum bicolor (sorghum)Results agree
2 papers in the same direction as this paper
- no effect
- no effect
Claims are grouped by organism, treatment and what was measured or targeted. A paper counts as positive when any of its claims in the group is positive.