Defense mechanisms against herbivory in Picea: sequence evolution and expression regulation of gene family members in the phenylpropanoid pathway
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: In trees, a substantial amount of carbon is directed towards production of phenolics for development and defense. This metabolic pathway is also a major factor in resistance to insect pathogens in spruce. In such gene families, environmental stimuli may have an important effect on the evolutionary fate of duplicated genes, and different expression patterns may indicate functional diversification. RESULTS: Gene families in spruce (Picea) have expanded to superfamilies, including O-methyltransferases, cytochrome-P450, and dirigents/classIII-peroxidases. Neo-functionalization of superfamily members from different clades is reflected in expression diversification. Genetical genomics can provide new insights into the genetic basis and evolution of insect resistance in plants. Adopting this approach, we merged genotype data (252 SNPs in a segregating pedigree), gene expression levels (for 428 phenylpropanoid-related genes) and measures of susceptibility to Pissodes stobi, using a partial-diallel crossing-design with white spruce (Picea glauca). Thirty-eight expressed phenylpropanoid-related genes co-segregated with weevil susceptibility, indicating either causative or reactive effects of these genes to weevil resistance. We identified eight regulatory genomic regions with extensive overlap of quantitative trait loci from susceptibility and growth phenotypes (pQTLs) and expression QTL (eQTL) hotspots. In particular, SNPs within two different CCoAOMT loci regulate phenotypic variation from a common set of 24 genes and three resistance traits. CONCLUSIONS: Pest resistance was associated with individual candidate genes as well as with trans-regulatory hotspots along the spruce genome. Our results showed that specific genes within the phenylpropanoid pathway have been duplicated and diversified in the conifer in a process fundamentally different from short-lived angiosperm species. These findings add to the information about the role of the phenylpropanoid pathway in the evolution of plant defense mechanisms against insect pests and provide substantial potential for the functional characterization of several not yet resolved alternative pathways in plant defenses.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".