A tissue‐resolved, network‐based transcriptomic framework for abiotic stress responses in sorghum

TL;DR

This study maps how sorghum's gene activity changes in different tissues under drought, heat, and salt stress, revealing tissue-specific patterns that could help improve climate-resilient crops.

Contribution

The paper introduces a network-based transcriptomic framework showing tissue specificity as the main driver of abiotic stress responses in sorghum.

Findings

Tissue specificity dominates gene reprogramming under drought, heat, and salinity stress in sorghum.

Heat stress elicited the most coherent transcriptional and regulatory responses, enabling deeper network analysis.

Tissue-specific gene modules and transcription factors were identified as key regulators of stress responses.

Abstract

Developing climate‐resilient crops requires a detailed understanding of stress‐induced gene expression dynamics, as maladaptive responses can compromise their productivity and survival. Sorghum, a globally important cereal with exceptional tolerance to multiple abiotic stresses, provides a powerful system for investigating these dynamics. However, how stress type, tissue specificity, and temporal progression jointly shape transcriptomic responses in crops remains poorly understood. Here, we present a comparative, time‐resolved transcriptomic atlas of sorghum responses to drought, heat, and salinity stress across shoot and root tissues. Integrative analyses revealed that tissue specificity is the dominant determinant of abiotic stress‐induced gene reprogramming across all three stresses. Building on these global comparisons, we focused on heat stress, as it elicited the most coherent and pronounced transcriptional and regulatory responses, enabling deeper network‐level interrogation. Co‐expression network analysis identified tissue‐specific modules enriched for phytohormone‐responsive genes, while gene regulatory network (GRN) mapping and cistrome analyses uncovered transcription factors (TFs) controlling key hub genes within these modules. Together, this study provides a foundational transcriptomic and network‐based resource for dissecting the regulatory architecture of abiotic stress responses in sorghum and offers prioritized candidates for future functional validation and engineering of climate‐resilient crops.

Understanding how crops coordinate gene expression across tissues and time under environmental stress is a major challenge for improving climate resilience. This study provides a comprehensive, network‐based transcriptomic resource that reveals tissue specificity as the dominant driver of abiotic stress responses in sorghum, offering a valuable framework and prioritized regulatory candidates for future crop improvement.

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