ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Plant Sci.
Sec. Plant Abiotic Stress
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpls.2025.1635416
This article is part of the Research TopicAdvancing Plant Abiotic Stress Research with Integrated Multi-Omics TechnologiesView all 3 articles
The evolution, variation, and expression patterns under development and stress responses of the NAC gene family in the barley pangenome
Provisionally accepted
- 1Faculty of Agriculture, Forestry and Food Engineering, Yibin University, Yibin, China
- 2State Key Laboratory of Crop Gene Exploration and Utilization in Southwest China, Sichuan Agricultural University, Chengdu, China
- 3Crop Research Institute, Shandong Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Jinan, China
- 4Key Laboratory of Aquatic Genomics, Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, and Beijing Key Laboratory of Fishery Biotechnology, Chinese Academy of Fishery Sciences, Chinese Academy of Fishery, Beijing, China
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The NAC transcription factor family is pivotal in regulating plant development and stress responses, yet its diversity and evolutionary dynamics in barley (Hordeum vulgare) remain underexplored. In this study, we performed a comprehensive pangenome analysis to identify and characterize the HvNACs across 20 barley accessions.A ranging from 127 to 149 HvNACs were identified in each genome, in which the Morex genome harbored the highest count. These HvNACs were classified into 201 orthogroups, further stratified into core (102), soft-core (18), shell (25), and lineagespecific (56) categories. Phylogenetic analysis delineated them into 12 subfamilies, of which the core genes have undergone strong purifying selection, by contrast, the shell and lineage-specific genes were under relaxed selection constraint, suggesting functional diversification in barley. Genomic variation, such as PAVs and CNVs, largely driven by TEs, highlighted the dynamic nature of NAC loci. Furthermore, transcriptome profiling of the HvNACs demonstrated diverse tissue expression patterns and different response characteristics under salt stress. These findings elucidate the evolutionary and functional dynamics of HvNACs, offering valuable insights for genetic improvement of breeding programs in barley as well as in other crops.
Keywords: Hordeum vulgare, NAc, pangenome, evolutionary dynamics, Pantranscriptome, Salt stress response
Received: 26 May 2025; Accepted: 14 Jul 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Xin, Zhang, Su, Wu, Shen, Zhuang, Wang and Chen. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Gang Chen, Crop Research Institute, Shandong Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Jinan, China
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