DOI：10.1111/nph.70232

发表期刊：New Phytologist

链接：https://doi.org/10.1111/nph.70232

作者：Yarong Jin* , Haidong Yan* , Xin Zhu*, Yuchen Yang*, Jiyuan Jia, Min Sun , Atiqa Najeeb, Jinchan Luo, Xiaoshan Wang, Min He, Bin Xu , Xiang Li, Ziliang Luo , Chunli Mao, Dejun Huang,Gang Nie , Guangyan Feng, Zheni Xie, Xinquan Zhang , Lin Luo and Linkai Huang#

Abstract: With the intensification of global warming, there is an urgent need to develop crops with enhanced heat tolerance. Pearl millet, as a typical C4 heat-tolerant crop, has mechanisms of heat tolerance at the cellular level which remain unclear. Constructed single-cell transcriptomic landscape of pearl millet leaves under heat stress and normal conditions, comprising 20 589 high-quality cells classified into five cell types. Vascular tissue cells were identified as the most critical cell type under heat stress, characterized by the highest number of differentially expressed genes and heat stress memory genes. Through single-cell WGCNA analysis combined with phenotypic and physiological analysis of heat stress memory gene UGT73C3 mutants and overexpression lines, we revealed the important role of heat stress memory genes in enhancing heat tolerance by promoting the clearance of reactive oxygen species accumulation. Our study provides a heat-tolerant crop leaf atlas revealing insights into heat tolerance and laying a foundation for generating more robust crops under the changing climate.

Keywords: heat stress memory, pearl millet,single-cell transcriptome, UGT73C3, vascular tissue cells.