International Journal of Molecular Sciences

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Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue is a continuation of our previous Special Issue “Advances in Breeding and Genetics of Wheat Crops”.

Wheat is an important staple food crop worldwide. The ever-increasing world population and the global climate issues combine to form a major wheat breeding challenge. Although great progress has been made over the past century, a quality and yield plateau now seems to have been reached in wheat breeding. It is essential to widen the genetic base and update the breeding strategy for creating elite wheat varieties that will promote future global food security. Recent advances in new genomic technologies and tools facilitate the identification of key genes and incorporate useful genetic variation for exploitation by wheat breeders.

This Special Issue on the “Advances in Breeding and Genetics of Wheat Crops” cover papers on basic and applied research highlighting fundamental discoveries in the field of genetics, molecular mechanisms of important traits, genetic materials, and new breeding strategies which can improve wheat yield and quality characteristics as well as tolerance to environmental stresses.

Dr. Lin Huang
Prof. Dr. Dengcai Liu
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. International Journal of Molecular Sciences is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. There is an Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal. For details about the APC please see here. Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

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Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

22 pages, 3210 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Identification and Analysis of lncRNA and circRNA Related to Wheat Grain Development

by Meng Wang, Lu Wang, Shuanghong Wang, Junli Zhang, Zhe Fu, Panpan Wu, Anqi Yang, Dexiang Wu, Genlou Sun and Chengyu Wang

Int. J. Mol. Sci. 2024, 25(10), 5484; https://doi.org/10.3390/ijms25105484 - 17 May 2024

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Abstract

The role of lncRNA and circRNA in wheat grain development is still unclear. The objectives of this study were to characterize the lncRNA and circRNA in the wheat grain development and to construct the interaction network among lncRNA, circRNA, and their target miRNA to propose a lncRNA–circRNA–miRNA module related to wheat grain development. Full transcriptome sequencing on two wheat varieties (Annong 0942 and Anke 2005) with significant differences in 1000-grain weight at 10 d (days after pollination), 20 d, and 30 d of grain development were conducted. We detected 650, 736, and 609 differentially expressed lncRNA genes, and 769, 1054, and 1062 differentially expressed circRNA genes in the grains of 10 days, 20 days and 30 days after pollination between Annong 0942 and Anke 2005, respectively. An analysis of the lncRNA–miRNA and circRNA–miRNA targeting networks reveals that circRNAs exhibit a more complex and extensive interaction network in the development of cereal grains and the formation of grain shape. Central to these interactions are tae-miR1177, tae-miR1128, and tae-miR1130b-3p. In contrast, lncRNA genes only form a singular network centered around tae-miR1133 and tae-miR5175-5p when comparing between varieties. Further analysis is conducted on the underlying genes of all target miRNAs, we identified TaNF-YB1 targeted by tae-miR1122a and TaTGW-7B targeted by miR1130a as two pivotal regulatory genes in the development of wheat grains. The quantitative real-time PCR (qRT-PCR) and dual-luciferase reporter assays confirmed the target regulatory relationships between miR1130a-TaTGW-7B and miR1122a-TaNF-YB1. We propose a network of circRNA and miRNA-mediated gene regulation in the development of wheat grains. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advances in Breeding and Genetics of Wheat Crops 2.0)

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10 pages, 7418 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Characterization and Mapping of a Rolling Leaf Mutant Allele rlT73 on Chromosome 1BL of Wheat

by Lin Huang, Meijuan Gan, Wenzhuo Zhao, Yanling Hu, Lilin Du, Yuqin Li, Kanghui Zeng, Dandan Wu, Ming Hao, Shunzong Ning, Zhongwei Yuan, Lihua Feng, Lianquan Zhang, Bihua Wu and Dengcai Liu

Int. J. Mol. Sci. 2024, 25(7), 4103; https://doi.org/10.3390/ijms25074103 - 7 Apr 2024

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Abstract

Leaf rolling is regarded as an important morphological trait in wheat breeding. Moderate leaf rolling is helpful to keep leaves upright and improve the photosynthesis of plants, leading to increased yield. However, studies on the identification of genomic regions/genes associated with rolling leaf have been reported less frequently in wheat. In this study, a rolling leaf mutant, T73, which has paired spikelets, dwarfism, and delayed heading traits, was obtained from a common wheat landrace through ethyl methanesulfonate mutagenesis. The rlT73 mutation caused an increase in the number of epidermal cells on the abaxial side and the shrinkage of bulliform cells on the adaxial side, leading to an adaxially rolling leaf phenotype. Genetic analysis showed that the rolling leaf phenotype was controlled by a single recessive gene. Further Wheat55K single nucleotide polymorphism array-based bulked segregant analysis and molecular marker mapping delimited rlT73 to a physical interval of 300.29–318.33 Mb on the chromosome arm 1BL in the Chinese Spring genome. We show that a point mutation at the miRNA165/166 binding site of the HD zipper class III transcription factor on 1BL altered its transcriptional level, which may be responsible for the rolling leaf phenotype. Our results suggest the important role of rlT73 in regulating wheat leaf development and the potential of miRNA-based gene regulation for crop trait improvement. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advances in Breeding and Genetics of Wheat Crops 2.0)

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