Functional characterization of Drought-responsive Modules and Genes in Oryza sativa: A Network-based Approach

Drought is one of the major environmental stress conditions affecting the yield of rice across the globe. Unraveling the functional roles of the drought-responsive genes and their underlying molecular mechanisms will provide important leads to improve the yield of rice. Co-expression relationships d...

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Main Authors: Sanchari eSircar, Nita eParekh
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Frontiers Media S.A. 2015-07-01
Series:Frontiers in Genetics
Subjects:
Online Access:http://journal.frontiersin.org/Journal/10.3389/fgene.2015.00256/full
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author Sanchari eSircar
Nita eParekh
author_facet Sanchari eSircar
Nita eParekh
author_sort Sanchari eSircar
collection DOAJ
description Drought is one of the major environmental stress conditions affecting the yield of rice across the globe. Unraveling the functional roles of the drought-responsive genes and their underlying molecular mechanisms will provide important leads to improve the yield of rice. Co-expression relationships derived from condition-dependent gene expression data is an effective way to identify the functional associations between genes that are part of the same biological process and may be under similar transcriptional control. For this purpose, vast amount of freely available transcriptomic data can be used for functional annotation. In this study we consider gene expression data for different tissues and developmental stages in response to drought stress. We analyze the network of co-expressed genes to identify drought-responsive genes modules in a tissue and stage-specific manner based on differential expression and gene enrichment analysis. Taking cues from the systems-level behavior of these modules, we propose two approaches to identify clusters of tightly co-expressed/co-regulated genes. Using graph-centrality measures and differential gene expression, we identify biologically informative genes that lack any functional annotation. We show that using orthologous information from other plant species, the conserved co-expression patterns of the uncharacterized genes can be identified. Presence of a conserved neighborhood enables us to extrapolate functional annotation. Alternatively, we show that ‘guide-gene’ approach can help in understanding the tissue-specific transcriptional regulation of uncharacterized genes. Finally, we confirm the predicted roles of uncharacterized genes by the analysis of conserved cis-elements and explain the possible roles of these genes towards drought tolerance
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spelling doaj.art-c3bfc63ce5b0461f8fbf329fffce75f72022-12-21T18:10:31ZengFrontiers Media S.A.Frontiers in Genetics1664-80212015-07-01610.3389/fgene.2015.00256136746Functional characterization of Drought-responsive Modules and Genes in Oryza sativa: A Network-based ApproachSanchari eSircar0Nita eParekh1IIITIIITDrought is one of the major environmental stress conditions affecting the yield of rice across the globe. Unraveling the functional roles of the drought-responsive genes and their underlying molecular mechanisms will provide important leads to improve the yield of rice. Co-expression relationships derived from condition-dependent gene expression data is an effective way to identify the functional associations between genes that are part of the same biological process and may be under similar transcriptional control. For this purpose, vast amount of freely available transcriptomic data can be used for functional annotation. In this study we consider gene expression data for different tissues and developmental stages in response to drought stress. We analyze the network of co-expressed genes to identify drought-responsive genes modules in a tissue and stage-specific manner based on differential expression and gene enrichment analysis. Taking cues from the systems-level behavior of these modules, we propose two approaches to identify clusters of tightly co-expressed/co-regulated genes. Using graph-centrality measures and differential gene expression, we identify biologically informative genes that lack any functional annotation. We show that using orthologous information from other plant species, the conserved co-expression patterns of the uncharacterized genes can be identified. Presence of a conserved neighborhood enables us to extrapolate functional annotation. Alternatively, we show that ‘guide-gene’ approach can help in understanding the tissue-specific transcriptional regulation of uncharacterized genes. Finally, we confirm the predicted roles of uncharacterized genes by the analysis of conserved cis-elements and explain the possible roles of these genes towards drought tolerancehttp://journal.frontiersin.org/Journal/10.3389/fgene.2015.00256/fullco-expressionricedroughtfunctional annotationWGCNA
spellingShingle Sanchari eSircar
Nita eParekh
Functional characterization of Drought-responsive Modules and Genes in Oryza sativa: A Network-based Approach
Frontiers in Genetics
co-expression
rice
drought
functional annotation
WGCNA
title Functional characterization of Drought-responsive Modules and Genes in Oryza sativa: A Network-based Approach
title_full Functional characterization of Drought-responsive Modules and Genes in Oryza sativa: A Network-based Approach
title_fullStr Functional characterization of Drought-responsive Modules and Genes in Oryza sativa: A Network-based Approach
title_full_unstemmed Functional characterization of Drought-responsive Modules and Genes in Oryza sativa: A Network-based Approach
title_short Functional characterization of Drought-responsive Modules and Genes in Oryza sativa: A Network-based Approach
title_sort functional characterization of drought responsive modules and genes in oryza sativa a network based approach
topic co-expression
rice
drought
functional annotation
WGCNA
url http://journal.frontiersin.org/Journal/10.3389/fgene.2015.00256/full
work_keys_str_mv AT sanchariesircar functionalcharacterizationofdroughtresponsivemodulesandgenesinoryzasativaanetworkbasedapproach
AT nitaeparekh functionalcharacterizationofdroughtresponsivemodulesandgenesinoryzasativaanetworkbasedapproach