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Background: Allopolyploid plants often show wider environmental tolerances than their ancestors; this is expected to be due to the merger of multiple distinct genomes with a fixed heterozygosity. The complex homoeologous gene expression could have been evolutionarily advantageous for the adaptation of allopolyploid plants. Despite multiple previous studies reporting homoeolog-specific gene expression in allopolyploid species, there are no clear examples of homoeolog-specific function in acclimation to a long-term stress condition. Results: We found that the allopolyploid grass Brachypodium hybridum and its ancestor Brachypodium stacei show long-term heat stress tolerance, unlike its other ancestor, Brachypodium distachyon. To understand the physiological traits of B. hybridum, we compared the transcriptome of the 3 Brachypodium species grown under normal and heat stress conditions. We found that the expression patterns of approximately 26% and approximately 38% of the homoeolog groups in B. hybridum changed toward nonadditive expression and nonancestral expression, respectively, under normal condition. Moreover, we found that B. distachyon showed similar expression patterns between normal and heat stress conditions, whereas B. hybridum and B. stacei significantly altered their transcriptome in response to heat after 3 days of stress exposure, and homoeologs that were inherited from B. staceimay have contributed to the transcriptional stress response to heat in B. hybridum. After 15 days of heat exposure, B. hybridum and B. stacei maintained transcriptional states similar to those under normal conditions. These results suggest that an earlier response to heat that was specific to homoeologs originating from B. stacei contributed to cellular homeostasis under long-term heat stress in B. hybridum. Conclusions: Our results provide insights into different regulatory events of the homoeo-transcriptome that are associated with stress acclimation in allopolyploid plants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Allopolyploidization combines parental genomes and often confers broader species distribution. However, little is known about parentally transmitted gene expression underlying quantitative traits following allopolyploidization because of the complexity of polyploid genomes. The allopolyploid species Arabidopsis kamchatica is a natural hybrid of the zinc hyperaccumulator Arabidopsis halleri and of the nonaccumulator Arabidopsis lyrata. We found that A. kamchatica retained the ability to hyperaccumulate zinc from A. halleri and grows in soils with both low and high metal content. Hyperaccumulation of zinc by A. kamchatica was reduced to about half of A. halleri, but is 10-fold greater than A. lyrata. Homeologs derived from A. halleri had significantly higher levels of expression of genes such as HEAVY METAL ATPASE4 (HMA4), METAL TRANSPORTER PROTEIN1 and other metal ion transporters than those derived from A. lyrata, which suggests cis-regulatory differences. A. kamchatica has on average about half the expression of these genes compared with A. halleri due to fixed heterozygosity inherent in allopolyploids. Zinc treatment significantly changed the ratios of expression of 1% of homeologous pairs, including genes putatively involved in metal homeostasis. Resequencing data showed a significant reduction in genetic diversity over a large genomic region (290 kb) surrounding the HMA4 locus derived from the A. halleri parent compared with the syntenic A. lyrata-derived region, which suggests different evolutionary histories. We also estimated that three A. halleri-derived HMA4 copies are present in A. kamchatica. Our findings support a transcriptomic model in which environment-related transcriptional patterns of both parents are conserved but attenuated in the allopolyploids. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]