Kumar, N.; Mishra, B.K.; Liu, J.; Mohan, B.; Thingujam, D.; Pajerowska-Mukhtar, K.M.; Mukhtar, M.S. Network Biology Analyses and Dynamic Modeling of Gene Regulatory Networks under Drought Stress Reveal Major Transcriptional Regulators in Arabidopsis. Int. J. Mol. Sci.2023, 24, 7349.
Kumar, N.; Mishra, B.K.; Liu, J.; Mohan, B.; Thingujam, D.; Pajerowska-Mukhtar, K.M.; Mukhtar, M.S. Network Biology Analyses and Dynamic Modeling of Gene Regulatory Networks under Drought Stress Reveal Major Transcriptional Regulators in Arabidopsis. Int. J. Mol. Sci. 2023, 24, 7349.
Kumar, N.; Mishra, B.K.; Liu, J.; Mohan, B.; Thingujam, D.; Pajerowska-Mukhtar, K.M.; Mukhtar, M.S. Network Biology Analyses and Dynamic Modeling of Gene Regulatory Networks under Drought Stress Reveal Major Transcriptional Regulators in Arabidopsis. Int. J. Mol. Sci.2023, 24, 7349.
Kumar, N.; Mishra, B.K.; Liu, J.; Mohan, B.; Thingujam, D.; Pajerowska-Mukhtar, K.M.; Mukhtar, M.S. Network Biology Analyses and Dynamic Modeling of Gene Regulatory Networks under Drought Stress Reveal Major Transcriptional Regulators in Arabidopsis. Int. J. Mol. Sci. 2023, 24, 7349.
Abstract
Drought is one of the most serious abiotic stressors in the environment, restricting agricultural production by reducing plant growth, development, and productivity. To investigate such a complex and multifaceted stressor and its effects on the plants, a systems biology-based approach is necessitated, entailing the generation of co-expression networks, identification of highly-priority transcription factors (TFs) dynamic mathematical modeling, and computational simulations. Here, we studied a high-resolution drought transcriptome of Arabidopsis. We revealed distinct temporal transcriptional signatures and demonstrated the involvement of specific biological pathways. Generation of a large-scale co-expression network followed by network centrality analyses identified 117 TFs that possess critical properties of hubs, bottlenecks, and high clustering coefficients nodes. Dynamic transcriptional regulatory modeling on integrated TF-target and transcriptome datasets uncovered major transcriptional events during the course of drought stress. Mathematical transcriptional simulations allowed us to ascertain the activation status of major TFs as well as the transcriptional intensity and amplitude of their target genes. Finally, we validated our predictions by providing experimental evidence of gene expression under drought stress for a set of four TFs and their major target genes using qRT-PCR. Taken together, we provided a systems-level perspective on the dynamic transcriptional regulation during drought stress in Arabidopsis and uncovered numerous novel TFs that can potentially be used in future genetic crop engineering programs.
Keywords
co-expression network, water deprivation, drought, systems biology, network centrality, computational simulation, Arabidopsis, transcriptional regulation
Subject
Biology and Life Sciences, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
Copyright:
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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