Coding and long non-coding RNAs provide evidence of distinct transcriptional reprogramming for two ecotypes of the extremophile plant Eutrema salsugineum undergoing water deficit stress

摘要

A United Nations study group has recently reported that the number of undernourished people has increased around the globe since 2014, signaling a reversal in reductions for world hunger since 2005 [ ]. A major contributing factor has been the impact of climate variation, including extreme climate-related events that have more than doubled in frequency during the past 30 years. Among climate-related disasters, drought has been especially impactful as it accounts for over 80% of all losses related to agriculture, and many nations most susceptible to drought have seen the greatest increase in undernourished people. A strong association between the prevalence of drought and increased food insecurity is not unexpected given that crop yield losses due to drought far exceed losses attributed to all other abiotic and biotic stressors [ ]. Scientists predict that global climate change will likely exacerbate yield losses in the near future as drought episodes will continue to undergo increases in frequency and severity [ , ]. Therefore, an improved understanding of how plants both respond to and recover from drought is vital to not only maintaining but also improving crop yields to meet a growing world population, one forecast to reach 9 billion by 2050 [ ]. However, despite the growing need for crops that better manage water deficits, developing crops with improved drought tolerance has met with little success to date, in part because our basic knowledge of plant processes contributing to tolerance is poor and hence gene targets for crop improvement are, as yet, ill defined [ ].